


Amaryllis

by paperstorm



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 19th Century, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Bottom Steve Rogers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Bucky Barnes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prince Bucky Barnes, Prince Steve Rogers, Romance, Slow Burn, Stable Boy Thor, True Love, Valet Sam Wilson, gratuitous flower metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 70,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22201567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: So do I remind you of someone you've never met, a lonely silhouette? And do I remind you of somewhere you want to be, so far out of reach? I wish you'd open up for me, 'cause I want to know you ... amaryllis bloom.//In 19th century Europe, Bucky and Steve are members of neighboring royal families. Steve is the heir to a throne he does not want, and Bucky is the neglected third child waiting to be married off and forgotten about. Trapped in unhappy lives by seemingly immovable circumstances, they find a way out in each other.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 578
Kudos: 593





	1. Tulip (Royalty)

**Author's Note:**

> Title and inspiration from the song Amaryllis by Shinedown.

_Dearest George,_  
  
_I write to implore humbly for your help._  
  
_Our Steven seems recently to have slipped beyond intervention. He has always been spirited, like his mother, however in the last number of years it has progressed beyond the impish delights of childhood. Just this month, in a definitive display of disrespect for his station, he saw it fit to permanently scar his precious flesh, with steel and ink, in what was surely some nefarious shop populated by escaped prisoners and other underlings of society. As if it were not enough to imagine my heir marred in this primitive, undignified manner, it soon became red and angry, blood and pus oozing from sores surrounding the crude letters. Steven was very ill, and if he had died as result of this misadventure, I shudder to think of the chaos that would ensue._  
  
_Sarah and I are at a loss. My health is not what it once was. I fear the boy will be King sooner than he believes, and as it stands he is far from fit to rule. Please, my old friend, assist us. A physician will visit from Spain in the coming weeks, bringing with him new treatments that might aid in my condition. If at all possible, I wish to send Steven to you and for the duration of this treatment, in the hopes that your firm hand could guide him, as you have your own children. My failings as a father should not translate to instability for my people. Any assistance you could provide would leave my family eternally in your debt._  
  
_Send word by return note as quickly as you are able. May God be with you, and with those you hold dear._  
  
_Yours in gratitude,_  
 _Joseph_  
  
Bucky turns the parchment over in his fingers. He reads it twice, a frown tugging at his brow as his eyes travel over the neat cursive for the second time. He looks up at his father and asks, “what does this mean? _Scarred his precious flesh_?”  
  
The King’s eyes narrow, a disapproving scowl down-turning the corners of his mouth. “A tattoo. Like a common sailor. On a prince, can you imagine?”  
  
Bucky catches the inside of his cheek between his molars. He hasn’t ever seen one, but they’ve been described to him. They sound horrific. He can’t fathom the pain – or the humiliation, walking around through life with black ink etched into his skin; the mark of the lowest class permanently ascribed. The sun that filters in through the tall windows of his father’s study leaves wavy lines over his mahogany desk. Bucky watches them move, as shadows are cast by the silk curtains swaying in the slight breeze.  
  
“And he nearly died from it?” he asks eventually.  
  
“I know only what you do,” the King says, gesturing to the letter in Bucky’s hands. “Do you remember him?”  
  
“Him, being Steven? No. Have we met?”  
  
“When you were very young. His father is an old companion, from our youth. They came to stay, years ago. Steven was … well. His father called him _spirited_ , as you read. I called him impudent. Always running about, taunting the servants, getting himself into all sorts of trouble. It seems not much has changed.” The King stands and heaves a heavy sigh. He stares out the window, and Bucky watches him closely.  
  
Sometimes, it feels as if Bucky barely knows his father. One thing he does know, is how to sense when his father isn’t finished speaking and is merely pausing for emphasis between sentences. It’s never a good idea to interrupt this performance, so Bucky keeps his questions to himself for the moment.  
  
“I suppose it’s no wonder he turned out this way, with his mother practically a commoner. A Lord’s daughter, of all things. Heaven have mercy on them. She found the boy amusing.”  
  
On principle, Bucky does not share his father’s distain for the peerage class, but does not dare say so. When he’s sure his father’s speech has ended, he asks, “is he going to come here again, then?”  
  
“Of course I would prefer he didn’t, but I will not refuse an old friend in a time of crisis. He is too ill, at the moment, to deal with his son. So the burden falls to us.”  
  
Bucky wrinkles up his nose. “Why?”  
  
A swift glare, and shame burns in Bucky’s chest. He drops his gaze to the floor.   
  
“Because we are charitable,” his father intones. Bucky should not have had to ask. “Further, our relationship with Maldeta will need to be maintained. If the boy becomes King in his present state, I cannot fathom the disaster. His kingdom has been an ally to us these many years. Favors must be returned.”  
  
“What are you asking of me?”  
  
“I will need your help. Margaret has her duties to the kingdom as the heir apparent, and Rebecca will not return from France for several weeks. You will be responsible for our charge when he arrives. Keep him out of trouble.”  
  
“Is he dangerous?” Bucky worries. It sounds a formidable task, considering especially this boy is older than him, although only by one year. Bucky is too meek to effectively give orders; his siblings always teased him for it.  
  
“Hardly,” the King scoffs. “He is a deviant, surely, but harmless. He simply needs guidance. He needs to understand what is soon to be expected of him, when his father is no longer with us. You are a good son and will someday be a good man, James. You understand tradition, respect, nobility.”  
  
Bucky would like to argue. To remind his father that he has never been in charge of anything before; certainly not a rebellious prince who leaves his castle in the middle of the night to have himself tattooed by criminals. He does not say anything. If it were his mother, he might. She allows him to speak freely. But he doesn’t argue with his father. No one argues with the King.  
  
“I shall do my best, Sir.”  
  
“Indeed you will.”  
  
* * *  
  
“I thought these might be suitable.” Natasha opens a velvet box to reveal gold cufflinks. Her auburn hair glints in the lamplight, pulled back into a tight knot at the back of her head.   
  
Glancing at them, Bucky recognizes them as one of his better sets, usually reserved for balls or visits from the nobility. He would like to say that he doesn’t think the arrival of a deviant warrants such spectacle and ceremony. But he wouldn’t say it out loud. Their guest is royalty, regardless of the way he’s chosen to embarrass his family.  
  
“An excellent choice, as always,” Bucky compliments graciously.  
  
Natasha offers him an appreciative nod and then goes about securing the links on the cuffs of Bucky’s shirtsleeves.  
  
Bucky stares at himself in the mirror and tries to imagine hiding a tattoo underneath his silken shirt and heavily embroidered jacket. The idea is too ridiculous. If he’d dreamt it up, Bucky might wonder if what he’d eaten the night before had gone off.  
  
“I’ve polished all of your crowns, so that you could choose for yourself.” Natasha moves to the case under the window where they’re kept and unlocks it.  
  
Again, Bucky holds in a nasty retort. “I’m expected to wear a crown?”  
  
“The King wants a full compliment. All the trimmings. He is a prince, after all.”  
  
“The smallest one, then. The silver, with the rubies.”  
  
“Silver with … gold cufflinks?” Natasha sounds hesitant; almost afraid to contradict Bucky. She’s been with them for years and is almost never nervous with him as some of the other servants are. Bucky must be projecting a far stormier temperament than he thought.  
  
There’s a soft knock at the door. His mother’s voice calls, “are you dressed?”  
  
“Yes,” Bucky answers. She enters, draped in purple and beads and golden trim as if her portrait were being painted.  
  
“Could you leave us, Ms. Romanov?”  
  
Natasha nods her head respectfully, gathers Bucky’s nightclothes, and closes the door behind herself on her way out.  
  
“You look very handsome,” Winifred says, joining Bucky to look in the mirror. She brushes the fabric on his shoulders but there is no dust or lint left to brush off. Natasha is impeccable.  
  
“What am I supposed to do with him?” Bucky asks, meeting his mother’s eyes in the mirror. They’re the same shade of wintery blue as his.  
  
“Keep an eye on him, that’s all. He isn’t a wild animal, my darling.”  
  
“He’s a criminal,” Bucky grumbles.  
  
“He is a young man whose life has not been as easy as yours. His father has been ill many times. He has lived since he was a child with the knowledge that he might any day become King, far before he’s ready for it. Your sister always knew that she would reach adulthood before she took control, and she knew that she would have the support of her family and the court. The young prince of Maldeta did not have those luxuries.”  
  
“Is there discord within the court?”  
  
His mother’s smile is grim and sympathetic. “Much. But there’s not time for all that, now. What are we going to put on your head?”  
  
“You’re not in your finest,” Bucky points out, glancing up at his mother’s headdress. It’s pretty, but she has far nicer.  
  
“Don’t be impertinent,” she reprimands. Her shoes click on the stone floor as she walks to the case, and her fingers lightly trail over the options. She selects one, golden and heavily jeweled, with a red velvet insert. It isn’t the one Bucky had asked Natasha for, before his mother interrupted. It’s far more extravagant. She places it on his head, and then fixes his hair around it. “There. Lovely.”  
  
“It’s a lot, for a boy who’s been banished for breaking the law.” Bucky would never speak in this manor to anyone except his mother or his elder sister Rebecca. Usually, he wouldn’t speak this way at all, even to them. He resents everything about the situation, and most of all resents the color it’s left on him.  
  
“Nothing he has done is against the law, nor has he been banished. Your father will not approve of this attitude, I suggest you adjust it before we go down.”  
  
She moves toward the door, and then stops, and softly adds, “I know you miss Rebecca. The arrival of our guest might do you well. Give you someone your own age to talk to.”  
  
Bucky squeezes his teeth together.  
  
“And she’ll be home soon enough.”  
  
“For a time. And then she’ll be gone forever.”  
  
“Not forever, my angel.” Winifred walks back to take his face in her hands. “She won’t be here, but that does not mean you’ll never see her.”  
  
“She’ll be in France. With him.” The great, unspeakable _him,_ the name Bucky has not been able to bring himself to utter. The French prince who is taking his sister away from him. And it is forever, regardless of the kind lies his mother spins.  
  
“And one day, not long from now, we will find you someone as well. You’ll see.” She pats his cheek comfortingly and leaves him alone with his reflection in the ornate bronze mirror.  
  
She’s wrong, about what she thinks is upsetting him. He isn’t jealous of Becca, he misses his sister. She was his confidant, his best friend, and now she’s in France courting her future husband, and once they’re wed, she will live with him in his castle and Bucky will rarely see her. Nothing will be the same as it was. It’s the same fate that awaits Bucky. The daughter of a noble will be assigned to him, and he’ll only be given a small amount of choice in the matter. He’ll be given a title and an estate, and he’ll become a stranger in his own shoes. Or, worse – she’ll already have a title and estate, and he’ll simply disappear, into someone else’s life.  
  
* * *  
  
Bucky descends the long, stone staircase, with his hand skimming the bannister. Rings wink at him off his fingers, reflected in the light from the torches on the walls. A footman stands, straight and motionless, on the landing where the stairs curve. He doesn’t move as Bucky passes, and Bucky is used to ignoring them. There was a footman, when Bucky was a child, who used to give him rides on his back when no one was around and sneak him sweets from the kitchen. Bucky doesn’t remember the man’s name, and hasn’t seen him since he was small. He assumes the man passed on. Unless they are dismissed, servants usually work at the castle for their whole lives. Briefly, Bucky wonders how many have died in his lifetime. It’s something he’s never considered before just now.  
  
His mother and eldest sister are already in the grand foyer, their bodies almost dwarfed under the enormous chandelier and larger-than-life portraits that hang on the walls surrounding them. Flowers have been brought in from the gardens. Orange Autumn blossoms, clippings from the willow trees, and tulips from the tropical house. Theirs is one of the largest on the continent, and the King always makes a show of their wealth and prosperity with flowers in the Autumn and Winter that wouldn’t grow out of doors. Peggy smiles at Bucky as he joins them, but only briefly. Her expression fades back to stoic as their father makes his entrance, flanked by the steward, his own valet, and several more footman in ceremonial dress.  
  
“His procession has nearly arrived, Your Grace. We received word by messenger moments ago.”  
  
“Excellent,” the King answers. “The prince will be tired, it is not a short journey. See that the kitchens are prepared to satisfy his appetite until the feast this evening.”  
  
“We’ve put him in the St. Michael suite, Mrs. Adley had it sorted this morning. I hope that’s agreeable.”  
  
“Yes, he’ll be quite comfortable there.” The King’s voice is dismissive, and the steward understands their conversation has finished. He bows his way out of the King’s path and busies himself with arranging the staff that bustle in to stand, silently, and look on as their guest and his own servants arrive.  
  
“Did you hear he has a tattoo?” Bucky whispers to Peggy, as their father addresses the head footman.  
  
“I’ve heard significantly more than that,” Peggy whispers back, but does not elaborate.  
  
She always knows so many things. As the heir, she has been allowed to travel, to sit in on court proceedings, to stay after dinner while the brandy is served and the men talk, long after Bucky and Rebecca were always sent to bed. Peggy has always been the heir first, and anything else second. She is Bucky’s sister but she takes her duties seriously and rarely indulges in gossip. She’ll be a great ruler. She’s been groomed for it from birth. Bucky and Becca have existed instead on the periphery of their father’s attention.  
  
The sound of carriages on the cobblestones outside alerts the arrival, and the massive oak doors are pulled open. Bucky was expecting an excessive procession, the likes of which is usual for their guests, but there are only three carriages. The one in the middle is only slightly bigger than the other two, and trimmed with gold but far more understated than the carriages Bucky’s father rides in. The three coachmen stall the horses in unison and step down from their seats to open the doors on the first two coaches. From the first a young man emerges, maybe older than Bucky but not by much. His coat indicates prominence but not nobility. Bucky assumes this man is the prince’s valet. Bucky’s own valet has never been dressed in such a stately fashion, but he’s has never traveled anywhere, because Bucky has never travelled anywhere.  
  
From the middle carriage, with the help of the coachman, a second man steps out into the mid-morning sunlight. It catches on his golden hair. He isn’t at all what Bucky was expecting. He’s taller than Bucky by at least a few inches, impossibly broad-shouldered and long-limbed. Bucky had assumed an air of criminality would exude from their new houseguest but instead he’s striking, classically handsome, and clean-cut with round blue eyes and perfectly combed blond hair. His dress is far more casual than the way Bucky and his family are decorated, as if perhaps hardship has left him humble. Bucky instantly feels he was right to wonder if they were overdoing everything with such an obnoxiously grand welcome.  
  
Slowly, the prince and his man walk up the steps and through the doors. Despite the prince’s imposing frame, his stride is elegant in a way that looks practiced. His head is held high, chin jutting out, surveying his surroundings as if he were a great explorer stepping off the deck of his ship on some strange new soil. Still, there is an unassuming quality to him that Bucky can’t quite identify. His stature is daunting, but he seems to be unaware of it.  
  
“Your Highness,” the King greets, his arms opening, a gesture that is meant to both welcome and intimidate. Bucky’s father is a master in the art of being hospitable, while still communicating his authority.  
  
“Steve,” the man corrects.  
  
Bucky’s breath catches. His father will not be pleased with the response.  
  
As expected, something hardens behind the King’s eyes, although he nearly hides it. Tersely, but still polite, he replies, “that would not be proper. I trust your journey was not too arduous?”   
  
“I suppose,” Steve answers.  
  
“Excellent. Allow me to introduce Her Majesty, Queen Winifred. And these are two of my children. Princess Margaret, my heir. And Prince James, the youngest of our small family.”  
  
“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,” Peggy says, regal and perfectly poised as she always is.  
  
“Likewise,” Steve returns, but it’s dull, and listless. He doesn’t mean it.  
  
He seems despondent, sullen almost, and Bucky recognizes that it wasn’t humility he sensed in Steve a moment ago. It was unhappiness. As he turns to Bucky, sharp blue eyes flash in the flicker from the candles, and when he smiles there is no joy behind it. It’s cold, almost a sneer. Bucky greets their guest as he has been taught, but he is not nearly as skilled as his father when it comes to masking distaste.  
  
“Are we going to be friends?” Steve asks him. It is a taunt, rather than a genuine invitation.  
  
* * *


	2. Anthurium (Hospitality)

Steve’s valet unloads multiple cases from the carriages, with the help of a small group of footmen, while the King leads his family and their new addition on a small tour. Bucky doesn’t know why he and Peggy need to go along, since they’re already aware of their own home, but neither of them argue. They never do. The King shows Steve the Great Library, the dining room, the many sitting rooms, the enormous ballroom, and the cozy parlor where they meet before and after dinner. Bucky’s mother explains the history of the castle, dating back centuries, and the prince is at least polite enough to nod and feign interest, although it looks to Bucky as if he could not care less to hear about the architect who designed the arched ceiling of the ballroom in the 15th century.  
  
Bucky hangs a few yards back with his sister, and quietly they discuss their guest. “He doesn’t seem to care much for deportment.”  
  
“He certainly doesn’t. Although there are other important things.”  
  
“While you’re addressing the king of a foreign nation, who has invited you to stay in his home?” Bucky is skeptical that Peggy really believes it. She believes in their father’s vision more than anyone. Although, abruptly he wonders if maybe she doesn’t, and has just been putting on the appropriate airs because she hasn’t any choice in the matter.  
  
“I suppose not. But Father can handle himself.”  
  
Bucky stares across the room at his mother and the prince, chewing resentfully at the inside of his cheek as he takes in the difference in their heights. His mother isn’t abnormally small, for a woman, but Steve still towers over her. Bucky had never bothered to organize within his own mind what he’d been anticipating, when the King had informed him of their upcoming visitor, but he realizes now he’d been picturing someone rough and hardened and crass, because of the limited information he had. Instead, Steve appears as if he shouldn’t have a care in the world, because anyone else would bargain with the Devil to be in his shoes – handsome and strong and the uncontested heir to a throne. He looks as if he could have anyone and anything he wanted in this life, and Bucky can’t understand why instead he’d choose to cause trouble for his own ailing father.  
  
“Do you know that Father’s put me in charge of all this?” Bucky knows how pitiful he sounds, complaining before the task has even begun. “It’s my responsibility to make sure he learns how to be a proper king, when _I’ve_ never even learned those things. If he returns to his kingdom and is a terrible ruler, it’s my head on the chopping block.”  
  
“Maybe if you’re kind to him, he’ll only throw you in a dungeon for the rest of your life instead of executing you,” Peggy jokes with a smile and a twinkle in her brown eyes that makes Bucky feel even more ridiculous for being so disconcerted.  
  
“I’m not suggesting he’ll have me executed.”  
  
“I know that. Calm down, I’m sure you aren’t really in charge of it, Father just wants you to keep the boy company since you’re the same age. He is alone in a foreign land, he needs you as a companion, not a teacher.”  
  
“You heard what he said in the hall. I doubt he honestly wants to be friends.”  
  
“Be kind anyway. Perhaps he’ll change his mind.”  
  
Because he’s tired of listening to himself whine, Bucky doesn’t respond. He isn’t optimistic, though.  
  
The tour ends in a smaller room than some of the others but with high ceilings and velvet green curtains draped over the expansive windows. A petite maid with messy hair and soot on her cheek is lighting the fire as they walk in, and her face goes white as a sheet when she sees them. She rushes to gather her brush and cloth amongst a litany of panicked apologies. The King ignores her, and shows Steve their Gutenberg Bible, proudly displayed under glass at the end of the room.  
  
“Please don’t apologize,” Peggy says generously to the frantic maid. “You had no way of knowing we would be coming, we should have sent word with a footman.”  
  
“Ma’am, I – I mean, Your Majesty, I’m – I am terribly sorry,” she stutters, unable to make eye contact with any of them, and she trips over her apron as she hurries out of the room.  
  
“You’d better tell Mrs. Prescott to reassure that girl she won’t be sacked,” Peggy says to Bucky, a sympathetic frown turning down her mouth.  
  
“Look at the mess she left.” Bucky gestures to the scattered ashes on the hearth that the maid didn’t sweep up in her haste to leave them. “Perhaps she should be.”  
  
“It wasn’t her fault, we startled her.” Peggy turns her frown to Bucky, and it morphs from sympathetic to disapproving. “You’re in a state today.”  
  
“I must be off now, I have a meeting at the local hospital this afternoon,” Winifred announces. She takes Steve’s hand, warm and motherly. Bucky clenches his teeth. “It was lovely to meet you, Steven.”  
  
“And you, Your Majesty,” Steve returns. So far, she is the only one he seems to like. Or perhaps he just knows better than to disrespect a queen in front of her husband and son.   
  
“Please call me Winifred. If we are to cohabitate for the next few months, we can do away with formalities.” She smiles at Steve, and then takes Peggy’s arm as she walks toward the door and leads Peggy out with her. An understanding smile is aimed at Bucky, and then they’re both gone.  
  
“Anything that you require, please do not hesitate,” the King says. “Your parents have entrusted us with …” he pauses, just for a moment, and then stoically continues, “with your care, while your father recuperates.”  
  
“It isn’t necessary for you to do that,” Steve says. He is brash and far too confident, touching on discourteous, and it makes Bucky nervous to hear someone speak to his father this way. He’s too familiar with the King’s tenuous grip on his temper. And it feels wrong, for a near stranger to be addressing him so casually.  
  
“It is our sincere hope that you enjoy your stay in – ”  
  
“No,” Steve interrupts, “I mean it isn’t necessary for you to pretend I’m here on a holiday.”  
  
The King looks momentarily flustered, and Bucky is entirely unfamiliar with the expression on his father’s face. He’s quite sure he’s never seen his father hesitate before. He hangs back and watches, caught halfway between anxious and exhilarated.  
  
Sounding reluctant, the King says, “alright. Yes, you have been placed in our charge in the hopes that you might learn to conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the throne you will soon inherit. If your father’s health does not improve.”  
  
“So when does the training begin? Will I have to pass a test?”  
  
With narrowed eyes, the King’s voice goes hard and cold. He stares into the fire as he speaks, no longer gracing Steve with the courtesy of eye contact. Steve has tested the last of his patience. “You will start by observing my children. They have been brought up to understand how to behave properly in all situations. They would never dream of leaving the grounds in the dead of night to have themselves disfigured in the village. I presume you are also aware we know of the incident that resulted in your being here.”  
  
“Among other things,” Steve mutters, under his breath.  
  
Bucky doesn’t think his father hears it.  
  
“Know that such activity will not be tolerated,” the King warns. He looks back at Steve, the fire from the hearth now in his eyes as well. “You will not leave the grounds unless you are granted permission to do so. You will learn how to behave. You _will_ become the ruler your people deserve. These are not options. Your kingdom has seen a reign of peace under your father, which has brought stability to the continent. I will not have our world thrown into chaos because you fail to understand the seriousness of the inheritance you were granted.”  
  
Steve’s jaw is set, clenched, but he doesn’t speak back. Bucky’s eyes dart back and forth between them, his heart beating into his throat, nearly expecting one of them to start swinging their fists.  
  
“James, you will show the young prince to his rooms,” the King commands, and with a flip of his long coat, he storms out of the room and leaves them alone.  
  
Steve’s gaze moves to Bucky, and his face relaxes visibly. The anger fades, and his lips curve into a small smile. “He seems nice.”  
  
Bucky glares but keeps his voice even. “He is a king. If I were addressing your father, I would show him the respect he is due.”  
  
“My father is going to die,” Steve replies, unfeelingly. His smile does not fade. “Soon.”  
  
“You can’t know that.”  
  
“I can’t believe he’s held on for this long. Maybe he clings to life because he knows what a disaster I’ll be after he’s gone.”  
  
“Do you care so little about him?”  
  
“I don’t imagine you’d approve of an honest answer to that question.”  
  
Bucky blinks at him, trying to work out in his head what to make of this person, and what to say next. He finds himself speechless, and so Steve breaks the silence instead.  
  
“So, you’re James. I’ll call you Your Majesty if you want, although that’s tiresome.”  
  
Still partially stunned, Bucky answers, “James is fine.”  
  
“It’s an ancient name. Shared with one of the Apostles. A long line of Scottish kings. Captain Cook.”  
  
Steve’s eyes sparkle in the firelight. Bucky doesn’t know how to react, so he says, “I’ll show you to your rooms.”  
  
He turns and walks out without bothering to check that Steve is following him. Footsteps do trail after him, and they climb the staircase in silence. The hallway is long, and it seems longer as they walk, unspeaking, with Bucky’s mind bouncing chaotically from one thought to the next and trying to resist the urge to turn his head and look at Steve. He had been dreading this even before Steve arrived, and now Bucky’s worries have been confirmed but in ways he couldn’t have expected. He had a picture in his head of a criminal, tough and cruel and brave. Instead, Steve is mostly confusing.  
  
The St. Michael suite is the largest guest suite in the castle. It has four rooms and a large balcony that overlooks the expansive gardens. The bed is enormous, bigger than Bucky’s, and the view is much nicer as well. Detailed paintings of angels and clouds and beautiful women cover the ceiling. The drapes and bed-dressings are made of silk from the Orient, and rubies sparkle on the handles of the bureau. The suite is meant to impress, to display their wealth to whomever the King might deem important enough to inhabit it. Bucky can only feel superior in that the personal library is small; much smaller than the one off Bucky’s own bedroom. In his mind, he makes a rude assumption that this boy probably doesn’t like to read anyway.  
  
Steve whistles, and his voice is mocking as he says, “how elegant.”  
  
“You could sleep in the stables with your horses, if you don’t feel worthy of these arrangements,” Bucky tells him.  
  
Steve blinks at him, and then a smile that almost looks genuine pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Was that a joke?”  
  
“I wasn’t being serious, if that’s what you’re asking.”  
  
Steve smirks at him, and then goes over to the bed. He slowly trails his fingers along the blankets. Suddenly, discomfort creeps up under Bucky’s skin. A moment ago this felt like an empty guest suite and now it feels like someone else’s bedroom, and that it’s no longer appropriate for Bucky to be here.  
  
“Your man should be up soon with your cases. There is a bell, if there’s anything else you need.” Bucky indicates a velvet rope hanging from the ceiling, but Steve looks at him instead of in the direction Bucky is pointing.   
  
“I’m sure I’ll be quite comfortable.” His tone balances on a line between derisive and sincere.   
  
Bucky finds it unnerving. “Well. Good. I’ll see you later, then. For dinner.”  
  
He turns to go, and is closing the door behind himself when he hears Steve’s voice calling, “until then, Captain Cook.”  
  
It irritates like stinging nettles, and Bucky pulls the door shut a little harder than he means to.  
  
* * *  
  
Bucky politely refuses the jewels that Natasha brings out as he’s dressing for dinner. She doesn’t insist, which means it wasn’t an order from Bucky’s father that they be decorated as if for a ball instead of an evening with their family. Bucky turned the finery down on purpose, to see. He isn’t surprised his father has lowered his expectations since Steve arrived this morning. If Bucky had opened his home to a guest and they had been so disdainful, he too would feel it was a waste to put on such a show.  
  
Neither Peggy nor Steve is in the parlor when Bucky enters it. The fire is roaring, and the King is standing with one gloved hand on the pale stone mantle, sipping from a crystal glass. His mother looks up when Bucky walks in, the footman at the door formerly announcing his arrival. She smiles at him with the orange light from the flames dancing on her face and pats the silk lavender sofa cushion next to her. Bucky sits with her, and she takes his hands.  
  
“You look wonderful,” she tells him.  
  
“You don’t need to say that every time.”  
  
“Of course I do.” She always has, every evening since before Bucky can remember. It must have been thousands, by now. Her fingers squeeze around his as she anxiously asks, “how is the prince?”  
  
The King makes an impatient sound, and moves away from them, toward the desk at the other end of the room so he doesn’t have to listen to their conversation.  
  
“He isn’t very nice,” Bucky says honestly, since the King can no longer overhear them.  
  
“His father may be dying,” Winifred reminds him.  
  
“I know that. He doesn’t seem to care about it.”  
  
“Of course he cares. People react to grief in different ways.”  
  
“Is that the real reason he’s here?” Bucky questions. “The note from his father said he wanted us to teach Steve how to rule his people, but is it really because their king is going to die and didn’t want his son around to watch?”  
  
Winifred pats his hand, and answers, “I’m afraid I don’t know.”  
  
“His Royal Highness, Prince Steven,” the footman announces loudly.  
  
Bucky and his mother both look up. The dark-skinned man from the first carriage is with Steve at the door. Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky notices that the King only looks after a few long moments of staring into his glass, so as not to appear overly eager. Bucky can already sense it’s going to be a constant battle for dominance between the two of them, and he is going to dislike every minute of it because in the darkest parts of his heart he isn’t sure which of them he’d rather see lose.  
  
Steve is in checkered sand-colored pants, leather boots with a low heel, and a velvet blue waistcoat and jacket. His blond hair is swept to the side over his forehead, and he leaves a beaver-skin hat on a sideboard near the door when he sees Bucky and his father have bare heads.  
  
“You look wonderful,” Bucky’s mother says to Steve, and Bucky bites the inside of his bottom lip and internally chastises himself for the twinge of jealousy.  
  
“Thank you,” Steve answers. “This is Sam, my valet. You weren’t introduced, earlier.”  
  
“How lovely to meet you,” Winifred says courteously. “It’s so kind of you to come all this way.”  
  
“Perhaps he could see if the footmen need any help with serving this evening,” the King suggests, dismissively. It’s only to get rid of Steve’s servant. The footmen never require help serving. There are dozens of them, and they only have a single guest for dinner.  
  
Sam and Steve exchange a brief glance, in which Steve’s lips purse like he’s trying not to laugh, and then Sam nods at both of Bucky’s parents and he disappears out the way he came.  
  
“Please, help yourself to a drink and then sit with us.” Winifred holds her hand out, motioning Steve in the direction of the brandy and glassware on a credenza behind them, against the dark panelled wall.  
  
Steve does as he’s told, and then settles with a glass in his hand in a burgundy chair to Bucky’s left.  
  
“Is the suite to your liking?”  
  
“I will be more than comfortable.”  
  
Peggy bustles nosily into the room, and interrupts before the footman can announce her. “Apologies, my glove ripped as I was dressing.”  
  
Their butler is just behind her, to announce that the dining room is ready for them to move into it. It’s Bucky’s second favorite room in the castle, after the Great Library. It’s cavernous, and the table is as long as a field, but when it’s just his family and they all sit at one end, it feels cozy. Bucky still enjoys it, but these last few weeks it’s felt so different without Becca. And now with the addition of a person Bucky so far doesn’t care for, it feels even further from the happy memories of his childhood.  
  
“Perhaps you could take Steven to the glasshouse in the morning,” Winifred suggests, as they’re served roast duck and potatoes by a chorus of impeccably dressed footmen.  
  
“Is that how you’ve managed to have tropical flowers everywhere?” Steve asks. “There are species in my rooms that I’ve never seen before.”  
  
“My husband is very proud of his collection. We have been blessed to acquire seeds from every corner of the world. Last month an expedition to the south of Africa brought us bulbs we had never encountered before. James will have to show you.”  
  
“If you’d like,” Bucky tells Steve, carefully keeping his tone amiable.  
  
“I’d love it.” Steve’s grin is accompanied by that glint in his eyes that irritates Bucky because he can’t read it.  
  
He can’t read anything about Steve. There is too much contradiction. It’s been less than a single day and Bucky has already grown tired of never knowing whether he’s being made fun of. Every word that comes out of Steve’s mouth seems caught right between taunting and genuine, and Bucky can never tell which it is.  
  
* * *


	3. Peony (Anger)

Bucky wakes to pale November sunlight filtering through the curtains and falling across his face. He stretches his arms above his head, and then rolls onto the right side of his body, too warm and content to consider getting up just yet. He floats halfway between asleep and awake for long enough that by the time his opens his eyes again, the sunbeams have moved to his shoulder. Reluctantly leaving the cozy nest of blankets, he climbs out of his bed and goes to the window, pulling back the curtains to look at the low sun and the long shadows it casts on the grounds below. There are groundskeepers wrapping the cedar hedges in sheets of burlap, to protect them from the coming Winter.  
  
He squints back at the sun, turned to a blurry yellow ball in the early morning haze. Steve’s room is a floor above Bucky’s but it faces in the same direction, and Bucky wonders if Steve is awake yet, maybe looking out at the same view. He feels badly, if only a little, about Steve’s first day in the castle. Steve wasn’t a nice presence in their home, but he did travel alone to a new land and he is among strangers in a strange place. Bucky has never done anything like that. He has never so much as left the castle grounds, let along travel on his own to a foreign country. A small part of Bucky secretly longs for such adventure, but most of him knows he’d be far too nervous to ever attempt it, even if it were possible. He should have been more understanding.  
  
He rings the bell for Natasha, endeavoring to be kinder today.  
  
It takes a while to track Steve down. Bucky checks various sitting rooms and the parlor and doesn’t find him, and wanders the halls asking passing maids and footmen who answer meekly that they haven’t seen him. Eventually, Bucky finds him outside, seated at a small table among the empty flower beds that come Spring will be bursting with blossoms. It’s chilly, and Bucky draws his coat tighter around his shoulders as he approaches. There is another person seated with Steve, and as Bucky gets closer he recognizes Steve’s valet. He frowns to himself in confusion and watches them from a distance for just a few moments. They’re in similar outerwear – deep green coats that are tailored sharply over twin broad shoulders, dark grey slacks and leather boots nonchalantly splayed out underneath the table. If Bucky didn’t know better, he’d be hard-pressed to guess which of them is the prince and which is the servant.  
  
Steve is leaned over the table with a quill, scribbling onto a piece of parchment. Across from him, the valet is chatting, smiling, and Steve appears to be answering back. It all looks so casual, similar to the way Bucky would converse with his sisters if they were alone, and Bucky has never behaved that way with any of their employees. Steve and his servant almost look as though they are friends.  
  
When Bucky gets close enough, the valet notices him and leaps up out of the chair as if he’s been stuck with a hot poker. He bows from the waist, and greets Bucky with a quiet, respectful, “Your Highness.”  
  
“Good morning,” Bucky replies politely.  
  
Steve glances over his shoulder at Bucky, sighs, and then says to his valet, “you don’t have to do that.”  
  
The valet looks back and forth between Steve and Bucky, clearly conflicted.  
  
Noticing, Steve looks at Bucky again, sounding bored as he confirms, “you don’t need him to do that, right?”  
  
Bucky doesn’t know what to say either. It’s customary for a servant, proper behavior that Bucky’s father would certainly demand, but Steve clearly expects Bucky to disregard this. Bucky is here with the intention of getting along better than they did yesterday. He doesn’t want to begin by annoying Steve, so he gestures to the chair the valet had been sitting in, and invites, “please.”  
  
“I should polish the shoes you wanted to wear this evening,” the valet says instead, and with another bow he excuses himself and heads back toward the castle, although he walks in the direction not of the door Bucky had come through, but of the servants’ entrance behind the kitchens.  
  
“He is _my_ man, you know,” Steve says in a tired voice, picking up the quill again and resuming his writing. “He doesn’t need to take orders from you.”  
  
“I didn’t order him anything!” Bucky protests. “I said he should sit.”  
  
“You weren’t very convincing.”  
  
An angry reply is on the tip of Bucky’s tongue, but he swallows it, and tensely asks, “could I join you?”  
  
“If you wish.”  
  
Bucky sits, and pointedly doesn’t look at the parchment Steve is scrawling on. “Why are you two dressed the same?”  
  
“Why shouldn’t we be?” Steve offers as a bored counter-argument. With his face tilted downwards, and the sun shining on him at just the right angle, Bucky can see faint cinnamon freckles on his slightly asymmetrical nose.  
  
Calmly, he explains, “I was taught to allow the servants to go about their duties and customs and not interfere with them. My mother always said it puts them in an unfair position, because they might get in trouble downstairs if they behave informally, even if you asked them to. Our heads of house are very strict.”  
  
“I suppose,” Steve muses, without looking up. “I’ve always tried to treat them like family. I have no siblings, so if not for the servants I’d have no one to talk to.”  
  
“I don’t think we treat ours unkindly.”  
  
“I’m sure you don’t.”  
  
“What’s his name?” Bucky asks about the valet. “I know you told us, but I can’t remember.”  
  
“Sam. And he _is_ my friend. It doesn’t matter to me if you don’t approve of it.”  
  
“I never said I don’t approve. It’s different, to how we do things here, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”  
  
Finally, Steve looks up, and his eyes are just barely narrowed, as if he’s trying to read something on Bucky’s face. “Do you have any friends, here?”  
  
The implication is clear – Steve expects Bucky to admit that he doesn’t. It’s only almost the reality. Bucky tells him, “there is a boy about our age, a few years older at most, who works in the stables. His name is Thor. I love to ride, so he and I have been friends since we were small.”  
  
It is a stretched truth. Bucky has certainly always been friendly with Thor, but outright friends is reaching a touch farther than what is accurate. The look on Steve’s face seems to suggest he knows it.  
  
It makes Bucky uncomfortable, being scrutinized so closely, so he asks, “what are you writing? If you don’t mind saying.”  
  
“A letter to my mother. To let her know I’ve arrived.” Steve signs it and puts the quill back into the ink pot. He holds the parchment up, blowing on it gently as the ink dries. Bucky is distracted for a moment by his lips, and the way the breeze sends locks of blond hair falling across his forehead.  
  
“Ask a footman to give it to Mrs. Adley when you go back inside, she’ll see that it’s posted.”  
  
“Maybe I’ll break one of my horses out of the stables and deliver it myself. It’s only eight days journey.”  
  
Bucky tries to keep his mouth from falling open. “You spent eight days in a carriage?”  
  
“How far away did you think Maldeta was?”  
  
“Not that far. What did you do for all that time?”  
  
“Not very much. Talked with Sam, mostly. Played card games. Read books.”  
  
“Your man rode with you? When you arrived he was in a different carriage.”  
  
“For appearances. We would have lost our minds in solitude for all that time.”  
  
Bucky doesn’t know how to respond. He’s not sure he likes the idea that their procession stopped shortly before arriving so that the man could switch back to his own carriage, because they were concerned Bucky’s family would take issue with it. He has more questions, but worries about annoying Steve and severing the tenuous truce they seem to have momentarily reached.  
  
Steve folds up the parchment and tucks it into his pocket. He pours a small amount of leftover ink into the soil below them, and then wraps the pot and quill up in a cloth and puts them into a different pocket, inside his coat. “Did you want to show me the glasshouse? Like Winifred suggested last night?”  
  
For just a breath, Bucky bristles at hearing his mother addressed so informally, but then he recalls she asked Steve to call her by name. “If you’d like. She was trying to find us something to talk about, but it’s alright if you aren’t interested.”  
  
“I’m interested.” Steve stands. “Lead the way, Captain Cook.”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Bucky says harshly, and then reigns his temper back in quickly enough to add, “please.”  
  
Steve’s eyes twinkle. In the low light, they look even bluer than they did before.  
  
At the west end of the castle, the glass walls and cavernous ceiling of the tropical house rise several stories into the sky. Gardeners bustle around as Bucky leads Steve into it, all of them averting their gaze and going quietly about their work. Steve notices it, and Bucky notices the frown on his face. There are hundreds of plant species growing in the soft, fertile soil and thick, moist air. Enormous palm fronds reach down from the ceiling, and ferns and rubbery, brightly colored leaves cover the floors. On tables are vast wooden beds, overflowing with more varieties of flowers than Bucky has ever been able to keep straight in his head. There is a registry, in a large bound book encased in glass. The head gardener keeps the key to it, and he archives every new plant they receive, sketching the leaves and blooms and recording instructions for its care.  
  
Steve doesn’t speak, but his eyes are wide as he wanders slowly through, reaching up to touch leaves that are brilliantly green and longer than three grown men laid feet-to-head. There is a quiet reverence in the way his fingers run over them. Bucky knows that exact feeling. He spends hours here, sometimes, breathing in the warm air and imagining all the magical faraway places these plants were brought from, and the adventurous men who travelled there and back. For the first time since he arrived, Bucky feels like he’s witnessing Steve experiencing a genuine emotion.  
  
“I’ve never seen plants from Africa before,” Steve says, as his hands touch the impossibly smooth trunk of a tree with leaves that look like giant flakes of snow.  
  
“I think that one is from the New World, although I don’t know where. Some place with nothing but sand and sun and ocean.”   
  
“Hello, gorgeous. You’ve come a long way,” Steve says, to the tree. His palms rub its trunk as if he thinks the plant could feel it; greeting it like one might greet a beloved pet.  
  
Pointing to a table across the room where several small, woody lumps sit, Bucky continues, “those are the African flowers my mother mentioned. They’re only bulbs right now, they’ll bloom in the Spring and then they’ll be planted outside.”  
  
Steve goes to it, picking up the page of instructions left behind by a gardener and reading it. “Amaryllis.”  
  
“The first of their kind in Europe,” Bucky tells him. “We don’t know what they’ll look like yet, but the man who brought them to my father says they’re beautiful.”  
  
“Will you all be in here, in the Spring?” Steve asks, his lips curling back into a smile. “Gathered around this table all day long, waiting for them to pop up?”  
  
“Why do you do that?” Bucky sighs in exasperation and wonders if he’s wasting his time, trying to mend fences with a person who clearly has no desire for an amicable relationship.  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Make everything into a joke. We had a rocky beginning yesterday but I am _trying_ to be nice to you right now, and you’re still making fun of me.”  
  
For a moment, Steve pauses, and Bucky braces himself for another rude comment. But then instead, Steve looks at him, just long enough to blink twice, and then turns his gaze back to the plants and says, “sorry.”  
  
It sounds suspiciously sincere and leaves Bucky feeling unsettled. He wasn’t expecting that, and isn’t sure what to make it of.   
  
“Could I see the tattoo?” Bucky asks. He’s never seen one in person before. He’s only heard of them, in stories from those who’ve been allowed to leave the castle and chance upon a sailor, or a criminal. Bucky has never been allowed to leave, so he’s never chanced upon either. The stable boy has a relative who was discharged from the Royal Navy and now makes his living on a private merchant schooner, and says the man is covered in ink from head to foot.  
  
Steve’s left eyebrow raises. With a sly grin, he asks, “which one?”  
  
“I thought there was only one. The one your father found, the one that sent you here.”  
  
“The infected one, then.” Steve rolls his sleeve up over his elbow, wincing as it passes along his thick bicep. He holds it out for Bucky to see – red, angry flesh, still swollen around words scrawled in black along the inside of his arm that Bucky isn’t able to make out. The sight of it makes Bucky’s stomach churn.   
  
“What does it say?”  
  
“ _To The End_. It will be legible once the swelling goes down.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“That I’d like to go to the end of the world,” Steve answers simply, as if Bucky should have guessed that on his own.  
  
Bucky frowns. “How on earth would you do that?”  
  
“I _wouldn’t_.” Steve pulls his sleeve back down and buttons the cuff back up around his wrist. “It isn’t possible, that’s entirely the point.”  
  
Bucky doesn’t understand but doesn’t say so. “How many more do you have?”  
  
Steve laughs softly. “You have a lot of questions.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Five.”  
  
“ _Five_?” Bucky repeats, much louder than he meant to. A gardener a few yards away from them startles at the outburst, and then moves away from them like he thinks he’ll be reprimanded for eavesdropping. Bucky pointedly lowers his voice as he continues, “and your father doesn’t know about the others?”  
  
“Well he doesn’t strip me down to nothing and examine me at the end of every day. The others I managed to keep hidden because they healed like they were supposed to. This one didn’t. When it started to smell and ooze through my shirt, he took notice.”  
  
Bucky’s stomach turns over on itself again.  
  
“You don’t have to look at me like I’m a slug on your shoe,” Steve says. “It’s more common than you think. Just not among people like us.”  
  
“Does it hurt a lot? Having it done, I mean?”  
  
“I suppose so.”  
  
“So why do it?”  
  
Steve looks at Bucky as if he isn’t sure what to say but is amused by his bewilderment. “Haven’t you ever done something that hurt?”  
  
“Not on purpose.”  
  
“Maybe we should get you one. You might like it.”  
  
Bucky shudders. “No thank you. Anyway, I’d have to leave the castle for that, and I can’t leave.”  
  
“You’ve really never left? Never gone outside? In your whole life?”  
  
Bucky bristles; offended by the accusation. “I’ve been outside, I’m not a prisoner. We were outside just a moment ago. We have grounds, a forest. Several small lakes, and paths between them. I’ve just never been beyond the outer walls.”  
  
“You have no idea how the people live.” Steve exhales through his nose and brushes his hair sideways off his forehead, smoothing it down the side of his head. Rebelliously, it falls almost immediately back out of place. “It isn’t like us.”  
  
“I know it isn’t.” Bucky resents the insinuation that simply because he’s never walked among the peasants as Steve has, he doesn’t know anything at all.  
  
“Aren’t you curious?”  
  
“Not really. Perhaps a little. Not enough to sneak out, as you do.”  
  
“What if I went with you?”  
  
Bucky pauses. “Have you done it already? Here, I mean? Last night?”  
  
Steve grins. “Yes.”  
  
“How did you get out without anyone seeing you?”  
  
“Well I didn’t go out the front door. Or any door, for that matter.”  
  
Bucky’s mouth falls open as he understands what Steve is insinuating. “It’s at least thirty feet to the ground! How did you make it down?”  
  
“It’s not as hard as you think, if you know how. So? What do you say? Come with me next time.”  
  
“If we were caught, you would be sent back to your kingdom and I don’t know _what_ my father would do with me but it wouldn’t be good.”  
  
“That is half the purpose of it. The risk makes it exciting.”  
  
“I don’t think I like that kind of excitement.”  
  
“What kind of excitement do you like, then?" Steve’s voice yet again is mocking. It doesn’t suit him. His face was so pleasant, only minutes ago, as he’d been genuinely smiling while looking at the plants surrounding them. The contemptuous expression it now twists into leaves him ugly. “Sewing? Reading all those dusty books in the Great Library? Practising your table manners?”  
  
Bucky’s blood boils. For just a few moments, he’d been foolish enough to believe in time he could grow to be friends with this person. Now he sees his first instinct had been right all along. “You’re hopeless. I can see why your father sent you here, you would never do as a king. I just don’t know that there’s anything this place has to offer you. You might be a lost cause already.”  
  
Steve’s cheeks are pink and his voice is quietly aggressive. “Do you honestly enjoy grooming the horses with the stable boy and then never going anywhere on them? Never even dreaming of anything that exists beyond what you know? There is an entire world just past the walls of this castle. And you’ll never see it.”  
  
“I’ll never die from an infected tattoo!” Bucky fires back at him.  
  
“You’ll die from something. Don’t you want to live before that happens?”  
  
Bucky stares into bright blue eyes and narrows his own. “You said, when you first got here, that the tattoos and the sneaking off weren’t the only reasons your father sent you away. You said it under your breath but I heard you. What did you mean by that? What is the other reason?”  
  
Steve smiles and it’s joyless. A scornful, almost cruel glint shines in his eyes. “You’re not ready for that secret yet, Captain Cook.”  
  
Bucky clenches his jaw, and his hands ball into fists. Fury burns in his chest. “I asked you not to call me that.”  
  
“And still I did. It seems your word is not law after all.” He’s ridiculing again, and Bucky’s had enough this time.  
  
“I hope they have to cut your arm off,” he spits, and then he turns on his heel and storms off.   
  
“Would you hold my other hand while they did it?” Steve yells after him.  
  
Bucky doesn’t bother with a retort.  
  
* * *


	4. Carnation (Pride)

For weeks, Bucky barely sees Steve outside of daily evening meals in the dining room. The night after their fight in the tropical house, Bucky had been dreading dinner, where they would undoubtedly be asked what they got up to that day. Bucky has never been any good at lying to his family, or to anyone. Steve, however, was apparently not affected by such an affliction. When asked by Bucky’s mother, Steve easily spun the tale of a day spent touring the castle. He lavished the King with compliments on his botanical collection, and Bucky wasn’t sure he’d ever seen his father look so delighted.  
  
Every evening since, Steve has weaved an equally convincing but entirely untrue story. According to Steve, he and Bucky have gone for many long rides on horseback, enjoyed the late Autumn hunting season, assisted a gardener in planting the hyacinth bulbs, and so many games of chess in the library that Bucky quickly lost count. In truth they haven’t done any of it, but the King and Queen seem to believe Steve’s stories. Bucky has kept quiet, since they all have a personal stake in believing what Steve says.  
  
He sees Steve during the day, from time to time, nearly always flanked by his dark-skinned valet. They are prone to exchange a knowing glance when they spot Bucky across a room or at the other end of a hall, and it makes Bucky burn up in anger to know they likely talk about him when they’re alone and that now a second person probably dislikes him, based on nothing but whatever Steve has told him. Probably nothing he’s said is fully accurate, but Bucky can hardly pull another man’s valet aside and demand he repeat everything he’s been told.  
  
More than once, Bucky has watched the two of them from far enough away so as not to be detected, and it pains him to admit it even to himself but he is becoming increasingly jealous of the pair. They truly do seem to be friends – constantly talking and laughing in such an unsettlingly familiar way. It made Bucky question the way he treats his own valet, but when he tried to behave more casually with Thomas, the man just seemed confused and uncomfortable so Bucky quickly ceased the experiment.  
  
Bucky also watches with a sharp eye the way Steve treats the rest of the servants. Bucky can’t say his own family treats their staff badly, because they don’t. His father is typically cold, as he is with nearly everyone, but his mother and Peggy are warm and kind and accommodating. Bucky takes note of his own behavior, and he too is respectful and generous when it is appropriate. But Steve out-does them all. Steve treats even the kitchen maids as if they are familial relations. He thanks every member of staff for anything they do as if it were not a job they’re being paid for, but an unnecessary feat above and far beyond their duties. At first it seemed disingenuous to Bucky, but after several weeks of observation, he is forced to draw the conclusion that Steve simply believes he is exceptionally blessed whenever anything is given to him. Bucky isn’t sure whether to find it a happy or sad thought.  
  
He’s also generally annoyed that he seems to be the only one Steve is still rude to. His performance for Bucky’s parents might be entirely insincere, but at least he’s nice to them, even if it’s fake. Steve seems to have decided Bucky isn’t worthy of even that, and Bucky can’t imagine he quite deserves it, despite their argument weeks ago among the tropical plants.  
  
“He’s lying, isn’t he?” Peggy asks, one evening, after their parents and Steve have all retired to their rooms, and Bucky and his sister are the only two left in the sitting room, relaxing on the sofa near a slowly dying fire.  
  
Her dark eyes, when he meets them, are a little glassier than they were over dinner. A smidge too much wine. She loosens up a little, in moments like this, and Bucky sees glimpses of the sister he’d known when they were children, before her training to be Queen took over everything and he lost her.  
  
“Who?” he asks.  
  
Peggy fixes him with a look that communicates they both know to whom she’s referring. “Steve. About all the grand adventures you two are getting up to together.”  
  
“What makes you say that?” Bucky shifts in his seat and focuses his gaze on the hands clasped in his lap.  
  
“The look on your face as he says it. Mother and Father may be too busy being enchanted by him to notice, but I’m not.”  
  
Bucky sighs heavily. “Fine. Yes, he’s lying.”  
  
“To what end, exactly?”  
  
“I don’t know. I never asked him to do it. Maybe he knows I was supposed to look after him, and I haven’t been, so he’s trying to keep me out of trouble.”  
  
“That’s kind of him.”  
  
“He’s a prick,” Bucky says, bluntly, and Peggy bursts into laughter.  
  
“He is a prick,” she agrees, tugging her silk glove off so she can wipe at her eye with bare fingers.  
  
“You think so too?” Bucky cries. He turns to her on the sofa, eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline. He’d been so certain everyone else couldn’t see it, too utterly charmed by him. Even the King, who’d been harsh with Steve when he first arrived, has been thoroughly placated by Steve’s easy confidence and good humor and handsome smiles. Bucky knows, although he’d die before admitting it out loud even to Peggy, that in Steve their father sees the son he wishes he’d had, that Bucky has never been. It’s as if he’s entirely forgotten the very reason Steve was sent here in the first place – the tattoos and the rebellion and the bad behavior. Bucky feels like the world has been turned upside down and he’s the only one remaining right-side-up, wondering why no one else can feel the disturbance in equilibrium.  
  
“He’s playing them like an instrument. Sniffing out exactly what they want to hear and spoon-feeding it to them. But I see him rolling his eyes when they look away,” Peggy says. She giggles again, smiling down into her glass. “Don’t tell them I told you that.”  
  
“I won’t,” Bucky promises. “Did you know he’s sneaking out here, too? Somehow going out his window and going down to the village in the dead of night. Doing the very thing he was sent here for, and still he has our parents wrapped around his little finger.”  
  
“I didn’t know for sure but it isn’t difficult to believe. He’s very good at charming people, I’ll give him that. He actually might make a decent king, if he ever stopped messing about with criminals and farmhands long enough to do the job.”  
  
Bucky frowns. “What farmhands?”  
  
“Never mind, it’s not important.” Peggy shakes her head, and Bucky is left curious but not enough to press for details. “The point is, you’re right. But he won’t be here forever. If he’s willing to lie to them about your friendship, let him. It works out well for everyone.”  
  
There’s more Bucky would like to say, but before he can his sister pats his knee and announces she’s off to bed. He’s left alone in the darkened room, staring into glowing coal embers, with more questions than he had before their brief conversation.  
  
* * *  
  
The days begin to shorten as the month changes, and December ushers in cooler nights and frosted mornings. Bucky awakens to pretty patterns of ice on his windows, and scullery maids become a more common fixture in all the main rooms as the fires need more frequent attending. Once again, Bucky attempts to follow Steve’s example and engage in conversation with them, but they seem terrified when he does so Bucky quickly abandons the endeavor and leaves them to their tasks.  
  
On a still, sunny Thursday afternoon, Bucky tires of being cooped up inside and wraps himself in a heavy cloak and scarf before making his way to the stables behind the castle. He walks along the stone pathway, where for centuries his ancestors have trodden on their way to the horses. Repeated weight and motion for an age have worn the cobblestones so that they dip in the middle, eroded away and sunken into the earth. He always feels as if they’re watching him, when he walks it. More so than elsewhere in the castle, even though he knows generations of his family tree have slept in his room and eaten in the dining room and lounged in the library. When he walks this path, following along in the ghosts of their literal footsteps, he wonders what his great-great-grandparents would have thought of him. If he’d have been what they expected.  
  
The strong, familiar smell hits him well before he hears the animals. Cattle, goats, and sheep move slowly about their Winter enclosures. When Bucky reaches the horses, he notices the sleek black ones that came with Steve’s cavalcade. In the next stalls, are the white-and-grey speckled horses Bucky’s father has been breeding. At last Bucky comes upon his own horse; a tawny steed with a long white mane and piercing, steely blue eyes.  
  
“Hello, Merlin.” Bucky reaches out to stroke the nose of his horse, brushing the mane back away from his eyes. Merlin tilts his face up into Bucky’s touch. “Should we go for a ride?”  
  
Expectedly the horse answers with nothing but eye-contact.   
  
“Thor?” Bucky calls. He’s not sure Thor is here, but he announces his presence anyway, not wanting to startle anyone.  
  
“Your Majesty?” Thor’s voice answers. He emerges from a stall, covered in straw and dirt. Hastily, he attempts to brush some of it off his shirt. He looks, Bucky notices for the first time, a lot like his horse. He, too, has tawny skin and long white-blond hair and steely blue eyes. His hair at the moment is pulled back off his face into a braid, but there are flyaway pieces falling across his face. He looks rugged, and capable, and so much more impressive than Bucky even in his rags. Bucky often feels like he looks like a child playing dress-up in his fine clothes, especially in eveningwear.  
  
“Good afternoon.”  
  
“My apologies, if I’d known you were on your way down I would have cleaned up.”  
  
It’s something he’s said – or at least would have said – a hundred times before, and it never bothered Bucky until just now. Today, it hits him at an odd angle. It occurs to him that Steve might be right. People who are not royal _don’t_ live like they do, because they can’t. Bucky wonders how many times he’s been rude or dismissive to a palace worker, because that’s how his father treats them and Bucky learned to mimic him at a young age in the hopes of garnering his attention.  
  
“Don’t feel the need to put on airs on my account,” Bucky says.  
  
Thor looks like he isn’t sure what to say, but then he nods formally. “Thank you. How can I be of service?”  
  
“Could I take Merlin out?”  
  
“Yes, of course. He’s just been fed so he’s ready to go. Let me fetch his saddle.”  
  
Bucky holds his hands up, indicating that he will handle it. “No need.”  
  
Thor nods again, but warily. “Anything else I can assist you with?”  
  
“Do you speak this way, when I’m not around?” Bucky inquires as he lifts the brown leather saddle down from a hook on the wall.  
  
“Sire?”  
  
Bucky isn’t quite sure how to explain what he means without running the risk of offending, so he changes the subject. “Are you busy, just now? Would you like to come with me on a ride?”  
  
Thor’s eyes go so wide they look in danger of popping from his skull. “Sire?” he repeats.  
  
Bucky tries to smile. It’s foreign to him, to treat a servant as he would treat one of his sisters, but Steve insists they deserve as much respect as someone with royal blood and Bucky is beginning to wonder if he’s correct about that. “If you’re not in the middle of something else, of course. I know you have work to do.”  
  
There is still the possibility that Thor agrees because he feels like he can’t decline the offer, but Bucky doesn't mind that so very much. Thor saddles a smaller brown horse and then mounts it and they take off toward the forest. Bucky is never as happy as he is when he’s riding. The wind on his face, the scenery whipping by, the way his eyes water, the burn in his thighs as he holds himself just above Merlin’s saddle. There’s nothing quite like it. Thor keeps up, just behind him, and Bucky smiles as they fly along the lawn toward the trees. Not because anything is amusing, but because he’s happy. For just a moment, his family and his obligations are behind him, and nothing but freedom is ahead.  
  
Thor’s horse gallops ahead of Bucky’s and springs skillfully over a fallen tree that blocks their path. Thor guides it just so, his hands gripping the reigns and his face set in determination.  
  
“You’re quite good at this!” Bucky tells him.  
  
“So are you!” Thor answers. For just a second, fear passes over his face, as if he’s worried Bucky won’t appreciate the jab. But Bucky laughs, so Thor does as well.  
  
“Do you ride often?” Bucky asks, nearly shouting to be heard over the wind.  
  
“Every day.”  
  
“Where do you go?”  
  
“Nowhere. Just around, like we are now. To keep the horses strong.”  
  
Bucky is about to respond, when Thor yells in command to his horse and they both speed even further ahead down the path. Bucky laughs again and kicks Merlin, urging him forward to keep up.   
  
They stop at the top of a hill, next to a stream that tumbles downward over a bed of rocks. It will freeze over soon, as the nights grow colder. The clouds in the sky are fluffy and white; rare for early December, when it’s usually just grey. The sun pokes out from behind one of them, casting the glen around them in long shadows. Merlin settles on the ground, while Thor’s horse wanders, grazing the grass. It’s still green despite the temperature, although not as lush as it had been in the Summer, after a few evenings of frost.  
  
“What’s his name?” Bucky asks, of the smaller animal.  
  
“Her. And it’s Hazel.”  
  
“Is she yours?”  
  
Thor frowns and grins all at once, as if Bucky should already know the answer to that question. “She’s yours. Or, your father’s, I suppose. She belongs to the castle, like they all do.”  
  
“Do you really ride every day?”  
  
“I ride several times every day. I take each horse out in turn.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s my job.”  
  
“Even in the dead of Winter?”  
  
“Even then. Although not for as long.”  
  
Bucky looks out at the stream. He sits on a rock, and with a nod invites Thor to sit as well.   
  
“Could I ask you something?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Is everything alright? You’ve never asked for company before, on a ride.”  
  
Bucky considers the question. Steve is getting to him, that’s the truth in all this. They barely tolerate each other and he’s still found a way to get under Bucky’s skin, and make him rethink so many things he thought he knew. “How long have we known each other?”  
  
“I’ve worked in the stables since I was a boy. I’ve run them on my own since my father died.”  
  
“So, ten years, at least. I see you a few times every week. And I don’t know anything about you.” Bucky looks at him. “We should be friends, don’t you think? After all this time?”  
  
Thor blinks. His piercing eyes have softened to a pleasant turquoise in the sunlight. “Why would you want to be friends with me?”  
  
“I think you’re the closest thing I’ve got to a friend already,” Bucky admits. “I’ve never left the grounds. None of us have. Rebecca was the first of us to venture out last month, and that’s only because she’s going to be married. She’s gone now and I might never see her again.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Sire.”  
  
“Call me Bucky. My mother and sisters always have.”  
  
Thor looks distressed. “I couldn’t.”  
  
“When we’re alone,” Bucky clarifies. “I know you’d be in trouble if anyone else heard you.”  
  
“Are you certain?”  
  
“Yes. And tell me something about yourself.”  
  
“There’s not much to tell, really. I rarely leave the castle grounds either.”  
  
“How long have you been here?”  
  
“I was born here. My father ran the stables and my mother worked in the kitchen, but they’ve both passed on now. I have an older sister. She worked in the kitchen as well but didn’t want to stay here forever. I don’t know where she is, if she’s even alive.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“I do love the horses,” Thor says, with a soft, fond smile.  
  
“So do I.”  
  
Thor nods, and then his smile turns to Bucky. “Could I ask something else?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“What is the prince like? The one who’s staying here.”  
  
Bucky tries to keep his reactive sigh small and dignified instead of dramatic, like he knows he’s been lately. “He’s alright, I suppose. I don’t know him very well, yet.”  
  
“There is a lot of talk in the servants’ halls about him.”  
  
“What kind of talk?” Bucky asks curiously.  
  
“You know how stories get around. I’ve heard whisperings about the sorts of things he would get up to when he left his castle.” Thor looks uncomfortable, and Bucky is burning with the desire to know exactly what Thor’s heard, but he reluctantly changes the subject.  
  
“Do they treat you well, here?” Bucky asks.   
  
“Well enough.”  
  
“Is there anything that you need? Anything that I can get for you? I’d like to hope you enjoy working here. That you aren’t just here because you have nowhere else to go.”  
  
Thor hesitates, still unsure of whether he can be honest, so Bucky tries to convey sincerity on his face.  
  
“A blanket?” Thor suggests meekly. “The one I sleep with is old and full of holes. I asked the house master for a new one and he said the one I’ve got should do. But it’s quite cold, some nights.”  
  
Bucky thinks about his own sleeping quarters. More pillows than he can count and an enormous fireplace and so many thick, warm blankets he has never once actually used them all. He’s never needed to. He’s not even aware of where Thor sleeps; likely, it’s just in the stables on the hay with the horses, with one worn blanket that is full of holes and doesn’t keep him warm.  
  
“If it’s too much trouble …” Thor begins, quickly.  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “It’s no trouble at all. I’ll get you a blanket. If there’s ever anything else, you come straight to me, alright?”  
  
“Thank you, Sire.”  
  
“Bucky, please,” Bucky corrects.  
  
“Bucky.” Thor swallows and gazes out into the stream. “Should we be getting back? If anyone turns up at the stables and I’m not there …”  
  
“You were with me,” Bucky assures. “I won’t let anyone blame you.”  
  
Thor nods. “You know,” he says carefully, “you can come with me whenever you want to. When I run the horses. If you’d like, since you like to ride.”  
  
Bucky smiles. “I’d like that.”  
  
* * *


	5. Rosemary (Healing)

The castle is transformed in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Lush evergreen boughs are draped over the bannisters, fastened with wire and decorated with bright red berries and velvet bows to match. Sprigs of holly and rosemary are hung in the windows, tied together with satin ribbon. Candles twinkle from every available surface, dripping wax in poetic patterns down their bodies and quickly replaced by unseen servants as soon as they burn down. Bucky’s home becomes a wonderland; a fairy-tale spun of sparkle and warmth and glad tidings. And outside, to complete the picture, glittering snow collects in drifts against the stone walls. On sun-soaked days, the grounds surrounding the palace are nearly too dazzling to look at without squinting.  
  
Bucky sits, one afternoon, in a comfortable armchair in his room that he’s dragged over away from the fire and closer to the window. There is a heavy book in his hands – dry and cracked from the cold – but he quickly loses interest in it, content instead to gaze through the frosted glass. The wind is wicked that day, whipping up the snow and tossing it around. Bucky’s glad he doesn’t have to be outside on a day so frigid but from inside, with a roaring fire and a thick blanket draped over his shoulders, the view is mesmerizing.  
  
His mother bounces through the halls, cheerfully directing the planning for the upcoming festivities and humming to herself and playing carols on the grand piano in the evenings until Bucky and Peggy beg her to stop. Steve doesn’t join them. He sits instead in a chair the corner of the room, blond hair glinting in the firelight, grinning silently into the drink in his hands. Bucky never asks what he’s smiling about; whether it’s genuine happiness or mocking. He doesn’t really want to know. Winifred is always happiest at Christmastime but Bucky wonders if she’s going a few steps further this year, to make the holiday merrier for their guest who won’t be spending it in his own home. Bucky can’t imagine being away from his family at Christmas – but, then, he can’t really imagine being away from them at any time, because he never has been.  
  
He has started riding with Thor nearly every day, even on days when the wind burns his skin and pulls tears from his eyes that freeze instantly to his cheeks. Sometimes Thor is still stiff and polite and Bucky wishes he would relax, but slowing he is relaxing, and treating Bucky less like his master and more like something close to familiar. It’s something new and unaccustomed to Bucky, having a true friend and not just a servant who is kind to him out of a sense of duty. He still watches Steve and his valet when they can't see him, and tries to emulate their casual dynamic with his own new friend. It isn’t quite the same, yet, but it’s still radically different from everything Bucky has known until now.  
  
Bucky thought he knew every inch of the expansive grounds but he doesn’t, and Thor shows him places he’s never been before. A marshy bog that’s frozen over, but in the Spring, Thor says, will be bursting with blooms that no one planted. A peak on the north shore that overlooks a tiny cluster of islands, way off in the distance. On a cloudier day, they might not be visible at all. Looking at them made Bucky ache to get to them somehow, just to step off of the landmass where he’s spent his entire life. He’s never even touched the ocean. The cliffs at the edge of their estate are too steep to climb down.  
  
Bucky shows Thor his favorite spots as well. He doesn’t show Thor the ruins, though. They’re the one secret Bucky has always wanted to keep for himself.  
  
“What do you do in the servants’ hall?” Bucky asks him one day, protected from the roaring wind in the stables, as he runs a brush over Merlin’s body and Thor sweeps out the next stall. “On Christmas Day.”  
  
“It’s quite fun, actually,” Thor’s deep voice answers. “There’s a piano in the hall, too, although not as nice as the one upstairs. Anna can play, and we have our own feast. His Highness always lets us have some wine.”  
  
Bucky thinks of the wine and brandy that free-flows at every dinner they ever host, and finds it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth to imagine it a treat to have a single glass on Christmas.  
  
Thor stops sweeping to rub dirt off his cheek with the back of his hand and looks at Bucky over the side of Merlin’s stall. “It isn’t as grand as yours but it’s a nice evening.”  
  
“If I thought there was any chance my father would agree, I’d invite you to our dinner.”  
  
Thor bursts into robust laughter and shakes his head. “Could you imagine? Me in my rags, covered in straw and fumbling with the silverware, seated at a table with the royal family.”  
  
Bucky laughs as well. He hadn’t strictly been joking, but it is a ridiculous image. “At least it would be interesting. The only people we ever host are other nobles, and they’re all the same. It’s just nodding politely and pretending to be fascinated by their conversation about land and titles and idle gossip.”  
  
“You probably shouldn’t be saying that.”  
  
“You’re probably right.”  
  
“If I thought there was any chance it wouldn’t get me dismissed, I’d invite you to ours,” Thor says. He brushes his long hair back and then resumes cleaning out the stall. The horse that usually occupies it is out in the pasture, for the moment, but will need to come in as the sun sets to avoid frostbite. “Although the maids would likely fall over dead if you walked into the kitchens.”  
  
“What do they think of us?” Bucky is genuinely curious, but at the same time he isn’t sure he really wants to know. Watching Steve interact with the staff has made Bucky ashamed of the way he used to treat them. “I hope it’s a nice enough place to spend your lives, that people don’t hate to work here.”  
  
“They like your mother. She’s always kind to us. And the Princesses are as well.” Thor pauses, and when he continues he’s being careful. “They respect the King.”  
  
“That’s not the same as liking him.”  
  
“I’m not sure they need to like him. He is a fair employer. That’s all you can really expect, don’t you think? He isn’t meant to be our friend.”  
  
Bucky nods thoughtfully. He hangs Merlin’s saddle up on a hook on the wall and gives his horse a pat on the nose and a bit of sugar from a bag in his pocket. “What about me?”  
  
“Natasha likes you.”  
  
Bucky can’t help but smile in surprise. “She does? I always worried I was something of a nuisance to her. Not that she’s ever insubordinate, but … I can’t put my finger on it. Waiting on me seems beneath her, somehow. I never told anyone that. I didn’t want to get her in trouble.”  
  
It’s another moment before Thor answers. “Once, a few years back, one of the maids told me she felt sorry for you.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“She said you seemed … lonely.”  
  
Bucky swallows. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say that at least he had his sister Rebecca to socialize with. It stings to remember that he’s lost that, now, so he lets the words fall away unspoken.  
  
* * *  
  
The next morning, by chance Bucky happens upon the house master in the hallway on his way to breakfast in the dining room. The man smiles sycophantically and nods his head, and Bucky stops him with a hand outstretched. He’s been debating whether it’s really worth his trouble to speak up, when the man could just go slithering to Bucky’s father if he wanted to and land Bucky in proverbial hot water, but the fierce snap of the wind the day before solidified the decision in his mind. For the first time in his life, Bucky doesn’t care if he gets in trouble.  
  
“I would like for the stable boy to sleep in the servants’ hall,” Bucky says, not bothering with pleasantries before he does.  
  
Dark eyebrows furrow together. “My … Your Majesty?” the man asks, forehead twisting into a deep frown.  
  
“With the others,” Bucky continues. “The stables are unacceptably drafty at this time of year. He should be inside.”  
  
Bony hands fold together and wring, long fingers wrapping around each other. “I’m afraid that will not be possible, my liege.”  
  
Bucky frowns. He’s never, even as a boy, liked the house master. _Hastings_ , he thinks the man’s name is, although he interacts with him so rarely that he can’t remember for certain. The King handles matters pertaining to the servants, when it’s necessary for a member of the family to intervene. Bucky hardly knows any of them by name, other than the few he speaks to on a daily basis.  
  
“And why not?” Bucky asks. Whatever minuscule amount of feigned confidence he possesses, he employs it. He stands tall with his shoulders back, hoping the gold trimmings on his morning jacket shine in the light from the lamps to reiterate his status. He is a prince, after all, and this man is their employee.  
  
“Master Odinson has been entrusted by your father to care for the livestock,” Hastings explains. “From inside the castle, he would be unable to hear if any of them were in distress during the night. It is important that he remain nearby.”  
  
Bucky’s molars clench together. In truth, he had not considered that, and it annoys him that it’s likely a decent point. “Then you will have a bedroom built for him, adjacent to the stables. With insulated walls, and a real bed, with pillows and blankets.”  
  
“My dear boy – ” Hastings interrupts, with all the deference and simpering that Bucky knows works on the King, but will not influence Bucky.  
  
He sharply interrupts, “I do not recall asking for your opinion on the matter. See that it’s done.”  
  
With a greasy smile, the man relents. “Yes, Your Majesty.”  
  
Bucky nods curtly at him, and smirks to himself as he walks away.  
  
* * *  
  
On the Sunday before Christmas, Bucky gathers an armful of books from his room that he’s been meaning to return to the Great Library. He could have asked Natasha to handle it days ago, but hadn’t, for reasons he isn’t sure he entirely understands. He makes his way though the long hallways and grand staircases, struggling at time to retain his balance with his heavy load. Three separate footmen he passes offer to help him carry the books but he politely turns them down. A maid is stoking a fire in the foyer and humming a Christmas tune as she does. She stops when she sees Bucky but he picks up the hum where she left off, and smiles to himself at the surprised look on her face. He finds he is quite enjoying being unpredictable, these days.  
  
The dark green curtains in the library are pulled apart and outside, fat snowflakes drift lazily to the ground, performing an idle ballet on the gentle breeze. The low sunlight leaves the room bright and cheery and the fires create a cozy glow. Bucky loves the library. The ceilings are high, the carpets are soft and worn, and the smell of old books wafts throughout the generous space. Two storeys of shelves line the walls, with an intricately carved stone bannister lining the ring-shaped second level. There are so many stories crammed into the stacks; some Bucky has read over and over, and many he has yet to experience. Since he’s physically trapped here, at least for the time being, it feels something like freedom to be able to experience the world through tales of foreign lands and rough seas and adventure. Sometimes Bucky wishes he could drag his bed down here, set it up by the vast windows and never leave.  
  
“Oh,” Bucky says in surprise, belatedly noticing Steve at a table near the smaller windows on the south wall. He’s dressed casually in dark brown slacks and a linen shirt without a jacket, with the sleeves folded up over his forearms. “I’m sorry, I didn’t … realize you would be here. I didn’t mean to disturb.”  
  
“It’s an enormous room,” Steve answers, without looking up. “There’s space enough for us both.”  
  
“I was just returning some books, and looking for a new one.”  
  
“You’re in the right place. It is a library.”  
  
His voice is flat and Bucky expects the typical smirk to accompany it but it doesn’t come. Steve still doesn’t look up from the parchment he’s holding between his fingers. Bucky hovers for just a moment, unsure of what to do. He sets his stack of books down on a different table, for the archivist to put away, and goes across the room toward a set of thick wooden shelves. In a few minutes of scrolling with his eyes and two fingertips, he locates the book he came to find and fills out the register to note that he’s taken it. He should leave, there are plenty of other nice places where he could spend the afternoon reading. Something in Steve’s unusually subdued demeanour nags in the back of Bucky’s mind, though, and he finds he can’t.  
  
“Do you sit in here often?” he asks, approaching Steve again.  
  
“Shouldn’t I?”  
  
“No, I didn’t mean … it’s my favorite room in the castle. I’ve never seen you here before.”  
  
Steve makes a soft noise in acknowledgement, but it isn’t really an answer.  
  
“What are you reading?” Bucky tries.  
  
Finally, Steve does look up. There is a frown on his forehead and something indecipherable in his blue eyes. “It’s a letter from my mother.”  
  
“Is everything alright?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Bucky nods even though Steve isn’t looking anymore, and feels like he shouldn’t have asked. He tucks his book under his arm and turns to go, but when he’s almost at the door, Steve speaks again, quietly like he hadn’t noticed Bucky wasn’t right next to him anymore.  
  
“I’ve never been away at Christmas.”  
  
Bucky stops walking, and closes his eyes for a moment. Steve’s voice was almost inaudible, because Bucky is yards away from him. His instinct is to keep going and pretend he didn’t hear it. Thus far all his attempts at friendliness have ended in Steve being rude and Bucky leaving angry, and there’s no reason this time should be any different, and because he’s so far away, it would be plausible that he really didn’t hear Steve’s comment and therefore justifiable for him to keep walking without being perceived as rude.  
  
Against his better judgement, he does turn back. He walks over, and sits across from Steve at the table. “I was saying that the other day. That you probably hadn’t ever been away from your family for the holidays.”  
  
Steve looks up and frowns deeper. “To whom?”  
  
“The stable boy. The one I told you about.”  
  
“You talk to him about me?” Steve asks with a raised eyebrow.   
  
“Not all the time. We talk about many things.”  
  
Steve nods, with a pensive expression on his face that turns into a small smile. “I’ll admit, I sort of thought you were lying. When you said he was your friend.”  
  
“I wasn’t. Although we have become closer lately,” Bucky admits. “I saw the way you are with your valet, and I thought … it seemed nice. Especially since Rebecca left, I have no one else to talk to.”  
  
Steve looks vaguely impressed for just a moment, before looking back down at the letter. “She misses me. Or, that’s what she says, anyway. I expect they’re glad to be rid of me, really. I was always causing trouble.”  
  
“I think mothers love us even when we cause trouble.”  
  
“I doubt yours knows what that’s like.”  
  
Bucky is struck with a strange urge to defend his sisters, even though on it’s face what Steve said should have been a compliment. “We weren’t always so perfect. We never got up to the sort of things you do, but we still gave them things to worry about.”  
  
“ _At this time of family and celebration, I wish more than ever you could be with us_ ,” Steve reads from the letter.   
  
“I’m sure she means it.”  
  
“They always expected me to just … do whatever they said, and take direction and learn how to rule and be happy enough with everything I had. I am anointed by God to be King like my father was, so I wasn’t allowed to want anything else. But that’s not fair, is it? I didn’t ask for any of it. Maybe we do have to accept our lots in life but we don’t have to be happy about them.”  
  
It seems like Steve is speaking to himself more than to Bucky; trying to convince himself that his rebellious behavior had been justified even though it hurt his parents. Bucky’s never heard him speak like this. Steve sounds more sincere than he ever has; his discontent real and palpable instead of exaggerated or used as a calculated weapon. Because Bucky isn’t sure how to properly respond, he says, “I’m sorry you have to be here. I’ve never been anywhere but I … I would be sad if I had to be alone on Christmas.”  
  
“I’m not exactly alone,” Steve argues, as if talking back is his default, and then softer, he adds, “thank you.”  
  
“I miss Rebecca,” Bucky tells him. “I think, maybe that’s the reason I haven’t been very nice to you.”  
  
Steve laughs a little and shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that.”  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“You haven’t been nice to me because I haven’t been nice to you. I don’t need an explanation. Maybe we’re both just unhappy. Maybe it was easier to take it out on a stranger than admit there’s nothing to be done about it.”  
  
Bucky nods. It feels both comforting and uncomfortable to be understood by someone he barely knows. “Maybe so. But no one should be unhappy at Christmas, don’t you think?”  
  
Steve looks at him. For the first time, the smile on his face, although small and careful, also looks real and without irony. Bucky can see, just for a moment, beneath Steve’s confidence and bravado and charm and good looks, to a lonely boy struggling to holster some semblance of control over a life he has never been in charge of. Bucky relates to the feeling more than he’s ever admitted. It’s only a glimpse, but Bucky is relieved by what he sees in Steve’s eyes.  
  
* * *


	6. Protea (Transformation)

“In that field over there,” Bucky says, pointing with his right hand, “there’s a fair in July. My father lets them use the land because it’s more open space than the Church has. There are livestock showings and musicians and carts with food and tradesman selling things.”  
  
The landscape surrounding them is bleak, today, because it’s cloudy. And endless canvas of snow and bare grey trees and an overcast sky to complete the melancholy backdrop.  
  
“Do you attend?” Steve asks.  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “My father makes a brief appearance. But he says it wouldn’t be safe for the rest of us, so I usually watch from up here.”  
  
Steve snorts. “What is he scared would happen? Some peasant farmer’s wife whips a dagger out from under her skirt and assassinates you? What purpose would that serve? You won’t even be on the throne.”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
In truth, Bucky has never considered that his father locking them away in the castle might be ridiculous. He’s never considered a lot of things. It’s nice, though, to have Steve’s derision on Bucky’s side, for a change, instead of against him. It’s nice that their temporary truce has blossomed tentatively into something at least nearly approaching a friendship. Steve is not as awful as Bucky thought. Or perhaps he was, but isn’t anymore.  
  
Steve leans down on his elbows on the stone railing that prevents them from tumbling over the edge of the balcony and to the ground far below. Bucky mirrors him. The fair always looks like fun. Every year he watches from this spot, listening to the music and the laughter, watching the children run and the adults talk and barter and bustle about, and wishes he could join them. At the same time, he always accepted blindly that it wouldn’t be safe, without ever wondering why or if his father might be wrong.  
  
“It’s quite a view.” Steve looks out over the fields and forests, painted white in early January snow, and the village beyond with its ancient stone walls and thatched rooftops.  
  
If Bucky squints, he can see the movement of tiny shapes that must be people, but almost too far away to tell for sure. They seem almost to exist in another world, one that Bucky could monitor through a looking glass but could never reach even if he tried. But Steve does reach them. “How long does it take you to get there?”  
  
It’s the first time they’ve spoken of it since their fight in the glasshouse, on Steve’s second day here, months ago, now. Bucky doesn’t know for sure whether Steve is still sneaking out at night, but he now knows Steve enough to assume that he is.  
  
“Not too long, on a horse.”  
  
“You steal a horse from the stables?” Bucky asks, raising his eyebrows in surprise.  
  
“I don’t take _a_ horse, I take _my_ horse,” Steve corrects. “It isn’t stealing when she belongs to me.”  
  
“Oh.” Bucky had momentarily forgotten Steve arrived with his own animals. “What do you call her?”  
  
“Daisy. My mother named her. She loves flowers.”  
  
“I do ride with our stable boy quite often, you could come with us if you want.”  
  
“What’s his name?” Steve asks, giving Bucky a familiar sideways glance – the one that says he’s trying to teach Bucky something without being too cruel about it. “You don’t have to call him the _stable boy_ , he’s a person.”  
  
“Thor. I do treat him like a person, honestly. I’m not like my father.”  
  
“Good,” Steve replies with a soft smile. “Could Sam come with us?”  
  
Bucky nods. “Of course.”  
  
“Then we’ll take you up on that offer. Although maybe not until next month. I hate riding too far when it’s this cold.”  
  
“What do you do, when you go out at night?” Bucky asks. The last time he inquired, it seemed to annoy Steve, so as much as Bucky has been burning to know, he hasn’t asked again until now. A month ago, everything seemed to annoy Steve. That’s changed recently. Bucky’s learned that Steve’s face, classically handsome as it always is, is much nicer to look at when he’s smiling.  
  
“What do you imagine I do? It isn’t some mystical land filled with fairies and dragons, it’s just a town. They’re just people. I go to the pub, I chat with some sailors, I offer to buy dinner for a prostitute who hasn’t eaten in three days, and yes, before you ask, there are prostitutes, and no, I don’t give them money for any reason other than charity.”  
  
“I wasn't going to ask that,” Bucky says honestly, because he wasn’t, even if he desperately wanted to.  
  
“It’s better here, actually. No one knows me here. As long as I dress to blend in, everyone treats me like I’m one of them. Back home, sometimes I’d be recognized.”  
  
“Why do you want to be one of them, when you’re always saying their lives are so difficult?”  
  
Steve shrugs one shoulder. Still leaned over the railing, his breath makes clouds in front of his pink-cheeked face as he answers. “I’m not jealous of their hardships. I’m jealous of their ability to choose their own lives.”  
  
“But how much are they really able to choose, when they have to feed their families and keep their roofs from caving in?” Bucky reasons. “How many of them do you think would love to be a painter or a musician but have to farm instead because if they don’t, their children will starve?”  
  
Steve goes quiet. When Bucky glances over at him, he’s staring intently toward the village, his dark blond eyebrows drawn together and the skin of his forehead twisted into a deep frown.  
  
“Did I say something wrong?” Bucky worries.  
  
Steve shakes his head slowly. When he replies, his voice is softer and more pensive than Bucky’s ever heard it. “No. No, of course you didn’t. I’d just never thought about it like that before.”  
  
Bucky says, “I’m sorry,” anyway, even though Steve assures him again that he said nothing wrong.  
  
“You really could come with me, you know. I meant that, when I said it. Or, maybe I didn’t really mean it at the time, but I mean it now.”  
  
Bucky sighs. “If we were caught …”  
  
“Then what?” Steve presses. Finally he stands back upright, and he turns to Bucky. Hip resting against the stone, expression imploring. “What really would happen? Your father would be angry, maybe he’d yell, and what else? What would be so terrible in him being angry with you for a while? He wouldn’t have you executed for disobeying him. Worlds wouldn’t end.”  
  
“He’d likely send you away.”  
  
Steve opens his mouth, and then exhales heavily, and drops his gaze to the bricks beneath their shoes. “Well. That wouldn’t be so horrible either, would it? You don’t like me much anyway.”  
  
The words hit Bucky like white-hot embers tossed in his face and it’s suddenly vividly important to him that Steve knows how wrong he is. “That’s not true. Not anymore.”  
  
When Steve doesn’t immediately respond, Bucky reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder. The velvet of Steve’s deep blue coat is soft under his palm.  
  
“I mean it.”  
  
“Come with me, then. Tonight.”  
  
The part of Bucky that secretly longs for adventure is warring with the much larger part, that has been conditioned to do as he’s told and not question it. He doesn’t know how to answer, because in truth he doesn’t know what he wants. He feels pulled in opposite directions, and isn’t truly comfortable with the idea of going either way.  
  
“Okay. It’s okay,” Steve says, taking Bucky’s silence as rejection and dropping the subject.  
  
They go instead together to the library. For all the times Steve had spun tales of their chess matches to Bucky’s parents when he’d first arrived here, they’ve made some truth out of his falsehoods in the last few weeks. They play at least every other day, and it’s often the most enjoyable part of Bucky’s day. Tucked in a cozy corner of his favorite room, fires roaring and daylight pouring in, with more consistent company than he’s had since Becca left, Bucky finds himself happy again, and noticing, now that he is, how unhappy he’d been before.  
  
* * *  
  
A mid-Winter thaw brings reprieve from the bitter clutches of Winter, as warmer winds roll in from the south and much of the snow begins to temporarily melt. Steve agrees again to ride with Bucky and Thor as long as his valet is invited as well, and after they’ve spent a few brisk mornings roaming the grounds together, Bucky is struck with the urge to do something he’s never done before. To take Steve to his favorite place, where he goes when he needs to be alone; where he’s never taken even Thor. Bucky’s thought for years he’d never tell anyone about it, and now he wants to.  
  
Bucky is panting by the time they reach the ruins; perched precariously and crumbling on cliffs that cascade sharply to the sea below. The cold, wet breeze makes him shiver, even as he wipes sweat from his forehead. Steve comes up behind him on his black mare, dismounting swiftly and allowing her to wander a few yards away from them, nibbling on grasses that stick up from the snow. Bucky’s horse does the same, when he climbs down.  
  
Steve walks past Bucky silently, moving closer to the old stone foundations. He reaches one hand out and touches what’s left of an outer wall. Bucky watches him, as Steve’s dark cloak flaps over his broad shoulders in the fierce wind and his pale fingers run over the moss-covered bricks. He’s facing away, so Bucky can’t see the expression in his eyes, but Steve’s movements are slow and deliberate and there is reverence in the way he touches the ancient stone. When Steve does look back, his expression is somber, but not sad.  
  
“How old did you say it is?”  
  
“I don’t know for sure,” Bucky answers. “I’ve spent hours in the library and found no record of it. And our archives stretch back to the 14th century.”  
  
He’s never told another living soul about this place, but of course he can’t know if others are aware it exists. He’s just always liked hoping it’s his secret alone. That maybe no human has been here since it was abandoned, maybe millennia ago.  
  
“You’re right, it could be a temple,” Steve says, as he walks under a fallen archway and into the center. He gestures toward a spot on the ground that’s stained dark brown. “There’s an old hearth here. Maybe this was an altar. A place some tribe used to contact the next world, a thousand years ago.”  
  
“It’s probably silly to give it so much meaning when I don’t even know how old it is or who was here to use it.” Bucky told Steve all his theories, and is embarrassed, now, at how excited he must have seemed. How breathless, how flushed, how over-eager to share his biggest secret with his new friend. “It could have just been a house in the last century, for all I know. Salt from the sea erodes stone walls.”  
  
Steve shakes his head and looks over at Bucky. His sky-blue eyes are bright and shining. “Can’t you feel them?”  
  
Bucky shakes his head back, to indicate he doesn’t understand the question.  
  
Putting a hand back onto the wall, as if he can draw information from the structure through his skin, Steve softly says, “there are ancient spirits, here.”  
  
Bucky’s stomach flips over on itself, because he’s always felt that. The very first time he found this place, he thought he could feel them; hear their ghostly whispers on the salty ocean breeze and feel their energy when he touched the stones. Gods of a long-dead religion, that cling to the place they were once worshiped in the hopes that one day they’ll be found again. The fact that Steve feels it too hits Bucky hard in the chest like an attack, so powerful for a moment he can’t breathe.  
  
“It’s beautiful,” Steve says, pausing for a moment as Bucky nods his agreement, and then adds, “I’m sorry.”  
  
Bucky frowns. “Why?”  
  
“When I first came here, I said the fact that you’ve never left the castle grounds meant you didn’t know anything. But that wasn’t true. You know so many things that I don’t,” Steve says.  
  
“Like what?” Bucky asks, trying not to scoff rudely. He doesn’t believe it. Steve seems to know everything about the world, and Bucky feels like he’s been locked in a cage his entire life. He isn’t sure he knows anything at all. He says so.  
  
“We were both locked in cages. We just reacted differently. I ran away from mine, over and over, no matter how many times they dragged me back. You chose to find the beauty in yours.”  
  
The words make something flutter in Bucky’s chest, and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep it from showing on his face. He walks closer to Steve and the ruins, as the wind picks up and makes Steve’s voice harder to hear from so far away.  
  
“What is the King’s plan for you? Surely they don’t intend to keep you trapped here forever.”  
  
“The same as Becca, I suppose. Once Peggy and Daniel have a son, I won’t even be in line for the throne anymore, so they won’t need me here. They’ll find some princess or noble’s daughter. We’ll meet, and be wed a few weeks later, and I’ll go to live with her. In a castle much like this one I’m sure, but … elsewhere.”  
  
“A different cage,” Steve surmises softly.   
  
Bucky chews at the skin inside his mouth again, now for a different reason. His eyes sting and he blinks and pretends it’s the wind.  
  
“Daniel is your sister’s husband?”  
  
With a nod, Bucky answers, “he’s on an expedition, at the moment. To the Orient. He’ll be back in a few months.”  
  
“Does she love him?”  
  
“Romantic love is for peasants,” Bucky reminds him. He knows Steve knows it already. “People like us marry for position.”  
  
“Is that what you want?”  
  
“I can’t imagine it matters much what I want.”  
  
“Of course it matters.”  
  
“To whom? Not to my father. Or anyone else.”  
  
“You have a choice, James.”  
  
“You know I don’t,” Bucky mutters angrily, although he isn’t angry at Steve.  
  
“Yes, you do,” Steve insists. “ _I_ don’t. I am the only heir to my kingdom. I abdicate or I leave or I die and my home is thrown into chaos, into war. Dukes fighting with nobles over who should assume control, my mother put to death for trying to stop them. One village attacking the next, peasant farmers turned to soldiers and then their children go hungry. That is not your life. You said it yourself. Once your sister sires an heir, you are free. You could run away and never look back.”  
  
“And where do you propose I go?” Bucky argues bitterly. “I have no money, and I couldn’t get any without asking my father for it. You _were_ right, when you said I don’t know anything. At least not anything real. I know how to ride a horse but someone else groomed and fed and saddled it. I can read a book and I can waltz and I can find an old church on a hillside, but I’ve never cooked a meal, or tended a garden, or used a sword. How would I survive if I ran away?”  
  
“You’re more capable than you realize,” Steve says. His forehead is frowning but his voice is gentle. “And none of those things are very complicated.”  
  
“People in the village think we’re lucky, don’t they? They think our life is a dream, and maybe they’re right, but the truth is we’re helpless. I wake up in the morning and breakfast just appears, and my clothes are clean and my bath is drawn but I have no idea how any of it happens. The village supplies our food, our staff, our protection. We’re dependent on scores of people whose names we don’t even know, and if one day they all decided to up and leave, we’d be dead in a week.”  
  
“People don’t know all those things because they were born with the knowledge, they know because someone taught them. You could learn, if you needed to. If you wanted … something more.”  
  
“More than what?”  
  
There is a sparkle in Steve’s eyes, and it’s almost as if Bucky can see the shadows of something Steve wants to say but won’t. “More than believing you aren’t allowed to be anything other than what your family decides for you.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean very much coming from you, when you’re doing exactly the same thing,” Bucky says. Immediately, he regrets it. “I’m sorry. That’s not true, I know it isn’t the same.”  
  
“Maybe it is, a little.” Steve shrugs a shoulder listlessly. “Maybe that’s why I care, maybe that’s why I want you to dream of something bigger than being married off and forgotten about. Because I can’t.”  
  
Bucky isn’t sure of what to say, so instead he leaves the ruins and sits down close to the edge of the cliff. Steve joins him, and for a few moments, they exist in silence; staring out at the waves and the gulls riding on them. The cold, wet ground seeps through Bucky’s clothes and skin and makes him shiver, but he doesn’t stand up.  
  
“You can call me Bucky, if you want.”  
  
“Bucky?” Steve asks, with raised eyebrows, and a laugh, but not an unkind one. Just surprised.  
  
“It’s what my family’s always called me. As a nickname. Well, not my father. He would never. But my mother and sisters.”  
  
“Bucky,” Steve repeats, like he’s turning it over in his mind. “Alright. I like that, it suits you, more than James. Far less stuffy.”  
  
His words warm Bucky in the center of his body and chase away the cold from the Winter air. They fall back into comfortable silence, disrupted by noisily crashing waves far below and the damp breeze bathing their chapped faces.  
  
Finally, Bucky asks, “is there a girl yet, for you? To become your queen?” They’ve never discussed it, but since Steve is near to Bucky’s age and is the heir to his father’s throne, it’s odd he hasn’t been matched up yet.  
  
“No. Although they’ve tried.” Steve’s voice is flat and uninterested, and his gaze stays trained on the distant horizon.  
  
“How many have they tried?”  
  
“Six or seven. I never kept track.”  
  
“Were they all so terrible?”  
  
“None of them were terrible.”  
  
“Why do you resist, then?” Bucky turns his head to look at Steve. From this angle, looking at his side profile, for the first time Bucky notices the slight bump in the bridge of Steve’s nose. “Why do you turn down your prospects, and put tattoos on your skin, and run away when you know they’ll drag you back?”  
  
“It isn’t about achieving a result. It’s about taking back what little control I have. It’s so I can sleep at night. They can force me to be a king, but they can’t force me to act like one prematurely.”  
  
“I must seem very feeble to you. That I’ve just submitted and let them control me.”  
  
“You’re not submitting. You’re choosing to make the best of it. There’s nothing feeble about that.”  
  
“No?” Bucky doesn’t believe it.  
  
“There is strength in changing what you can and accepting the things you can’t,” Steve insists. “It’s just not a strength I’ve ever had. I get stuck on the second part.”  
  
“You don’t behave as if you believe it can’t change. You behave like you think if you cause enough bother, one day they’ll give up on you and let you go. So which is it?”  
  
With a furrowed brow, Steve admits, “I don’t know.”  
  
It sounds to Bucky like he does know, but doesn’t want to say, so Bucky lets the topic fall away. He looks back at the water, and a moment later Steve’s head drops down onto Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky’s stomach flips again, and he swallows and stays perfectly still; caught part-way between confused, and afraid if he makes a sound, Steve will move away.  
  
* * *


	7. Pear Blossom (Friendship)

“Couldn’t we at least have waited for the snow to melt?” Steve calls, loudly to be heard over the roar of the wind. He tugs his cloak tighter around his shoulders as his horse trots next to Bucky’s.  
  
“Would you like to turn back, Your Highness?” Thor asks, twisting around on Hazel to address Steve.  
  
“No, he wouldn’t,” Bucky answers for him.   
  
“It’s so much colder here than what we’re used to,” Steve complains, referring to himself and his valet.  
  
“It likely isn’t quite so hot in the Summer as where we come from, though, being so close to the ocean,” the valet says.  
  
“Have you ever seen the ocean before, Mr. Wilson?” Thor asks, sounding a bit to Bucky as if he’s only politely feigning interest in their conversation. He doesn’t know Thor to be sycophantic; likely, instead, he’s just trying to make a good impression.  
  
Bucky can hear the annoyance in Steve’s voice as he orders, “his name is Sam. My name is Steve. We’re not in court, everyone call everyone else by their Christian names or I’m turning around and heading back.”  
  
“He really, really doesn’t like the cold,” Sam teases, to explain his master’s sour mood.  
  
Bucky stifles a laugh and earns himself a glare from Steve for his poor attempt at doing so.  
  
They fly across the still-frozen fields, lined with dormant deciduous trees, frigid breezes whipping their faces and sending tears down Bucky’s cheeks that crystalize before they reach his chin. He wipes them away and urges his horse on, speeding past Thor and Hazel. As predicted, the heavy footfalls of Thor’s horse quicken behind Bucky, and he hears Thor’s hearty laugh, faint against the howl of the wind, as he joins in the race. It’s become their routine, to play like this.  
  
Steve and Sam fall behind but catch up when they reach the waterfall. It cascades down from at least three storeys up, over rocks and moss, much slower at this time of year than it will in the middle of Summer, and trickles along a stream where it will eventually meet the ocean.  
  
“Took you long enough,” Thor jokes, as the other two arrive on their shiny black horses.  
  
“A king is never late,” Steve intones, dryly, as if he’s quoting something his father taught him, that he always found preposterous until just this moment when it finally became useful to him. “Everyone else is early.”  
  
“You’re not a king yet,” Sam reminds him. Steve responds with a raised blond eyebrow, and Sam leaps off his horse in response and dramatically sinks to one knee in the snow. He bows ridiculously and begs, “a thousand apologies, Your Great Highness.”  
  
Steve snorts out an undignified laugh, a huge smile creasing the skin around his ocean-blue eyes. “Get up before you catch your death, idiot.”  
  
Bucky silently marvels at them. He’s come a long way with Thor in the last few months, but if his father ever caught their stable boy openly mocking the heir to the throne, he suspects it would take less than one day for Thor to be publicly beheaded.  
  
“So, what is so special about this spot, that we had to ride here in this weather?” Steve asks, hopping down athletically from his horse and looping the reins loosely around the nearby branch of a tree.  
  
“Nothing, other than it’s nice to look at.” Bucky dismounts, last of the four of them. He lets Merlin wander, though, instead of tying him up. Bucky’s horse is well-trained, and never goes too far away. “In a few week’s time, this whole riverbed will be bursting with Spring blossoms. Tulips, daffodils, crocuses.”  
  
“We should have waited, then.”  
  
“We’ll come back.” Bucky suppresses a smile at Steve’s continued sour mood, and unhooks the basket Thor had asked the kitchen maids to pack for them, in the hopes that a full stomach might improve it. “Will food and drink cheer you up a bit?”  
  
“Yes.” Steve eagerly holds out a hand as Bucky offers him a bottle of wine. Their fingers brush as it passes between them, and Steve’s corresponding grin is just for Bucky.  
  
* * *  
  
Halfway through the warmer but greyer month of February, Daniel returns.  
  
Ships approach from the horizon for a full day before they reach land. Bucky can see them coming from the highest window in the palace; in the bell tower, where he isn’t supposed to be, but goes anyway with Peggy just to watch the incoming fleet. They don’t speak much, but she takes his hand and squeezes it. Bucky, in equal parts, imagines and tries _not_ to imagine the bizarre, frightening, exhilarating adventures they must have experienced. The faraway places, the foreign languages, the unknown people and cultures. How fantastical it must be, to embark on such a journey. How terrifying, too. He’d never have the courage for it, even if he was allowed to accompany Daniel the next time he leaves.  
  
The King invites his Dukes, nobles, and courtiers for a three-day celebration to mark the prince’s return. Bucky isn’t allowed to attend any part of the festivities that take place outside the castle grounds, but his home becomes a bustle of noise and bodies and excitement. There seem to be suddenly twice the servants in their midst, as all their guests have brought their own. Bucky can’t ride with Thor, in the meantime, because he’s swamped by a sudden increase in horses to tend to. Even Steve, so ornery and aloof when he first arrived, seems to get caught up in it, making new acquaintances and cavorting with them in the afternoons he used to spend with Bucky in the library.  
  
The dinner to welcome Daniel home is grand and excessive. Bucky dresses in his finest at his mother’s insistence, with broaches on his dark blue jacket and an embarrassingly showy crown perched on his head. Women in lofty gowns of taffeta and lace float down the hallway, thousands of jewels sparkle in the candlelight, laughter echoes off the stone walls, wine and brandy flows. The last time their table was this full, of both bodies and heavily laden silver dishes, it was the night of Peggy’s wedding. Bucky had been happier, that night, because he’d still had Becca by his side, and Peggy wasn’t moving away, and any further change to his world had seemed so far into the future it might as well have been fantasy.  
  
Opposite Bucky and several chairs down, Steve is seated between two nobles’ daughters. He is not wearing a crown – Bucky suspects he must not have brought one with him, because he’s never seen Steve with anything on his head. His sunshine smile is out as bright as a clear day in July, as he chats easily with them, charming them as thoroughly as he’s charmed everyone else for two days. All their guests seem to find him irresistibly fascinating. Whether it’s derisive looks from some or excited inquiries from others, they’re all interested in him. The King, meanwhile, parades Daniel around amongst the court that will one day be his. Bucky, as he’s used to, is relegated very much to the background.  
  
After a sumptuous nine-course dinner, people mull around the expansive drawing room with brandy in fine crystal stemware. Bucky stands at the room’s end near the wall of portraits, where his great ancestors watch over them from their perches on the wall. Wrapped in ornate golden frames, their colorful, immobile faces observe and catalogue and silently judge. Peggy – _Princess Margaret,_ in this crowd – stands near the fireplace, exquisite as she always is with perfect chestnut curls and the red silk sash Daniel had brought her from China draped immaculately around her shoulders. Steve, far across the room, past velvet furniture and half-drunk Lords and demurely giggling Duchesses, is surrounded once again by glittering gowns and creamy skin and silken gloves and twittery laughter.  
  
“Having a nice time?”  
  
Bucky looks up. Steve’s valet is next to him, dapper in a sharply tailored suit and gloves. Bucky frowns at the tray of glasses balanced on one of his hands. “Why are you doing that?” he asks. It should be beneath the dignity of a prince’s valet to serve drinks at a party.  
  
“I offered to help. I don’t mind.”  
  
“Well, you should,” Bucky tells him, bluntly. “Have some respect for your station, don’t let them bully you.”  
  
The man just looks at him for a moment, dark eyes seeing much more than they should, and then he nods. With a deferential, “yes, Sire,” he turns to go, and Bucky’s stomach drops down about a foot and suddenly his knees buckle.  
  
“Wait,” he says quickly, “Sam. I’m sorry.”  
  
Sam looks back at him, an indecipherable expression on his face. “I didn’t let them bully me. They asked if I’d mind helping. I agreed to because I don’t mind.”  
  
“That’s nice of you,” Bucky offers, by way of another apology for his outburst.  
  
Sam sets the drink tray down on the credenza behind them. “Shouldn’t you be calling me _Wilson_ , in here?”  
  
Across the room, Bucky’s father laughs. He’s surrounded by noblemen who laugh louder, all of it likely fake, just part of the grand show they always put on for each other.  
  
“He wouldn’t notice, either way,” Bucky says.  
  
Nodding, Sam follows Bucky’s attention as it shifts from his father and the gathering of flatterers, to the other side of the room where Steve is still politely entertaining the company of their daughters. They all laugh, as well, as Steve says something, and his cheeks turn pink, and Bucky scowls.  
  
“Come with me,” Sam says, quietly.  
  
He walks away before waiting for an answer, so Bucky does trail after him. Sam leads him outside, to the main balcony outside the dining room. In the distance, the sun begins to just touch the blurred line of the horizon, turning the sky pink and orange as it does.  
  
“He’s not going to run off and get married to any of them,” Sam tells him.  
  
Bucky knows the man is referring to Steve but feels he should play dumb for at least a moment, if only for appearances. When Sam just raises an eyebrow to indicate he isn’t buying it, Bucky deflates, and leans back against the railing. “How do you know?”  
  
“I can’t tell you that. Just believe me.”  
  
“He could,” Bucky argues petulantly. He’s thoroughly annoyed by the childish tone of his own voice, as if Steve is a shiny new toy that was meant to be _his_ shiny new toy and now someone else is playing with it. “He’d have every right to.”  
  
Sam merely hums noncommittally in agreement and doesn’t offer anything further.  
  
“I know I’m being …” Bucky sighs and scrubs his hands over his face. “I’ve never really had a friend before. That’s all. Now that one sister is married and the other is gone, it’s been nice, having someone to talk to. But I know he won’t be here forever.”  
  
“You’re not friends with Thor?” Sam asks, with a raised eyebrow.  
  
Bucky shrugs. He wonders what would be thought, if someone were to glance out the window and see him standing here, talking to a servant. He wonders, too, whether he’d care what they thought. “I am now, I suppose. Before … well. He’s kind. I don’t mean to say that he isn’t. But when people _have_ to be kind to you, it’s difficult to tell when they’re being sincere.”  
  
“That’s fair,” Sam concedes.  
  
“You’re really friends with Steve? It’s not just for show?”  
  
“I am,” Sam says, without a trace of uncertainty. “We’ve known each other since we were children. I’ve always been at the palace. When I was old enough to work, I was tasked with sweeping up the kitchens. He used to ditch his nannies and sneak down to play with me.”  
  
Bucky smiles. It’s an endearing image, picturing the two of them in short-pants running around vast, dusty servants’ quarters, pretending the broomsticks were magic wands or pirate swords.  
  
“Then I was a footman, when I was a little older. And Steve requested I become his valet the day he turned 16.”  
  
“And as John Wade said, _the rest is history_?” Bucky asks, still grinning.  
  
“Well, he was referring to Napoleon. Not a prince and his valet.”  
  
Bucky blinks at him.  
  
Sam’s eyes gleam. “You’re surprised I know that?”  
  
“I am,” Bucky admits, only mildly distressed by the discomfort of it. “But I shouldn’t be.”  
  
“Steve is happier, here, than I’ve seen him since we were small. That is in no trivial part thanks to you.” Sam’s smile is genuine, and reassuring.  
  
Bucky nods, and isn’t sure what to say in response, but lets the words wash over him like slipping into a warm bath.  
  
He finds Steve on the same balcony, much later in the evening after most of their guests have retired to their rooms for the night. There is a thick blanket draped over Bucky’s shoulders and he wraps it around himself to keep the cold out. He’d rather shiver than go back inside, back to his parents and his sister and Daniel sitting by the fire, nothing between them but dry, stilted conversation and expensive liqueur. This high balcony has become their spot – his and Steve’s – to retreat to after dinner. Tonight, especially after his conversation with Sam, something delicate is on Bucky’s mind. Something he has been itching to know for weeks but hasn’t asked yet out of fear of breaking the still-fragile friendship they’ve created.  
  
“Are you having a nice time?”  
  
“Yes,” Steve says quickly. “Good food, nice people.”  
  
Bucky nods. He doesn’t agree, because he can’t quite, but he doesn’t see the use in voicing that particular thought aloud. “Could I ask you something?”  
  
Steve glances over at him briefly; just a minute flick of his gaze before it settles back on the lights of the village glowing in the distance. He repeats, “yes.”  
  
“You don’t have to answer, if you’d prefer not to.”  
  
“Ask it and we’ll see.”  
  
“I asked you once, before we were friendly. About … the other reason you were sent here. The reason that wasn’t the tattoos or the sneaking off into the village at night.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Your father caught you doing something else you weren’t supposed to be doing, didn’t he?”  
  
For a long moment, Steve is silent. Bucky repeats that he doesn’t have to say, but Steve doesn’t answer to that either. He just stares into the distance, his brow furrowed, as if he’s weighing the consequences of spilling the secret. Finally he admits, “I’m worried you might not talk to me anymore, if you knew.”  
  
“It couldn’t be as bad as that,” Bucky reasons, even as his heart beats into his throat and he isn’t entirely confident of his own assertion. “You’d never have … killed someone, or stolen something important that didn’t belong to you. You care about people too much to hurt anyone.”  
  
“I didn’t hurt anyone,” Steve confirms quietly. “But sometimes that doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Please tell me.” Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s forearm. “I promise I’ll still talk to you, no matter what it is.”  
  
Steve blinks down at Bucky’s hand where it’s touching his sleeve and frowns, but not like he wants Bucky to remove it. Bucky does anyway, just in case he’s reading Steve’s expression incorrectly.  
  
“My father sent guards into the village, to capture me and bring me back to the castle,” Steve says finally. “The night after he found out about the tattoo and had threatened to send me away. I shouldn’t have snuck out again so soon, but I did, and he knew, and he sent them after me. They found me in a pub.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound so horrible.”  
  
Steve shakes his head. He still won’t look at Bucky, choosing instead to focus intensely on the dark grounds before them. “I was in the alleyway behind the pub, actually. With a local boy who worked in the fields. His name was Gabriel.”  
  
“Drunk? Fighting?” Bucky suggests, trying to make it easier on Steve by guessing.  
  
Steve laughs softly, humorlessly, and shakes his head. “No.” He sighs, and fidgets uncomfortably. “We were doing something that we shouldn’t have been doing. Something … a man is only supposed to do with his wife. Or so the Church says, although it happens more than people think. Just not usually between a prince and a farmhand.”  
  
It takes Bucky far longer than it should to work out what Steve means by that. When it finally hits him, it hits him harder than a barrel of stones dropped onto him from ten storeys up. A pit forms in his stomach, twisting and lurching as his mind tries to make sense of what he thinks Steve is saying. “You … you mean you were …”  
  
“I knew you’d be angry,” Steve mumbles, sounding utterly ashamed of himself. He busies his hands with pulling at loose threads around the cuffs of his sleeves.  
  
“Now, hold on, I’m not angry,” Bucky protests. “I’m just trying to understand, you’re saying you were … with a boy? In an _alley_?”  
  
“It wasn’t an attack, if that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t the first time he and I had … and there were others, before him. Although never the same one for very long. They all knew the sort of trouble they’d be in if we were ever caught.”  
  
The thought turns over in Bucky’s head but he can’t force it to make any sense. It’s like he knows each individual word Steve has spoken, but strung together in that order they become a foreign language. “ _Why_? Was it just a way to get back at your father?”  
  
“No.” Steve finally looks at him, and his eyes are shiny with tears. The breeze pushes strands of golden hair over his forehead, and Steve pushes them away with shaking fingers. “I didn’t see it, Bucky. Maybe the very first time I just wanted to break the rules but then I realized … I didn’t see it. When I looked into a girl’s eyes.”  
  
“Didn’t see what?”  
  
“Whatever you’re supposed to see. Whatever you’re supposed to _feel_.” Steve huffs in frustration, and a tear spills over the rim of his left eye and Bucky’s hand twitches with the urge to reach up and wipe it away. “Whatever my parents felt, or your parents, or your sisters. Even if people like us don’t marry purely for love, they still feel _something_ when they look at each other on their wedding day. I didn’t feel it.”  
  
“Maybe you haven’t met her, yet,” Bucky reasons. “The one that will make you feel it.”  
  
Steve shakes his head and looks away again. “You don’t understand. The girls they brought for me were beautiful, and positioned, and clever and refined, and I didn’t feel anything when I looked at them. Gabriel made my heart race and my palms sweat, he made me imagine all sorts of ridiculous things that could never be possible, even though we barely knew each other.” He spits the words, like they’re offensive to him. Like he despises himself for saying them but isn’t able to stop now that he’s started. “That’s why I could never marry any of them. They all deserved better than being tied to someone who could never love them.”  
  
Bucky swallows and turns back to rest his elbows on the railing, now staring at the darkened sky himself and working to process everything Steve is spilling on him. It isn’t what he was expecting. He knows it’s a forbidden thing by all the laws of man and God he’s ever been made aware of, the few times this topic has been raised in hushed tones when Bucky was nearby enough to hear it. It isn’t something anyone talks about, and yet everyone knows the rules all the same.  
  
“What happened when they found you?”  
  
“They dragged him off me. It was a scene. I tried to tell them it wasn’t his fault but they took him away from me anyway, and took me back to the castle. I don’t know what happened to him. I tried to find out, but no one would tell me.”  
  
“Do you think they hurt him?”  
  
“I can’t imagine they would have let him go,” Steve says bitterly, like it breaks his heart to think about it. “If he’s alive, he’s in prison. It’s entirely my fault, he never should have been mixed up in all this.”  
  
“What about when you got back?”  
  
“Nothing, really. My father wouldn’t even look at me. He’d already sent the letter to your father at that point, I was already going to be cast off. He didn’t speak to me for over a week, and then I came here. He’s going to die, and my last memory of him will be his utter disgust at having me for a son.”  
  
Bucky doesn’t know what to say. He wonders if he’s as surprised as he should be. He wonders if he’s surprised at all, or if somewhere deep down he suspected this but just never let himself consider it.  
  
“You hate me, now, don’t you?” Steve sniffs and wipes his own eyes with the sleeves of his shirt. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”  
  
“No, Steve, I don’t,” Bucky says. “I can’t say I fully understand but … you clearly wouldn’t have chosen this, if you had any say in the matter.”  
  
“I don’t know how to be normal … everything would be so easy if I could just turn it off, these feelings … I can’t, though. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”  
  
He sounds so miserable that Bucky can’t keep his distance anymore. No matter his own confusion, Steve is his friend and he’s in pain and Bucky can’t leave him like this. Tentatively he reaches up to put an arm around Steve’s shoulders, and when Steve shudders, Bucky wraps him in a hug so tight he can feel every sob down to his toes. Steve clings to him, his fingers curling into fists in handfuls of Bucky’s coat and tears soaking through the fabric where his face presses into Bucky’s shoulder.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers urgently. “I don’t hate you, not at all. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”  
  
Steve just hugs him and cries, and tears sting in Bucky’s eyes too because it hurts to see someone he cares about so upset. Even more troubling, is the thought that Bucky never knew he should feel something important when he looked at a girl. He thought his parents and sisters were wed for position and to ensure the stability of the monarchy with heirs. He didn’t think they needed to love each other. If Bucky was meant to feel something while looking at a pretty face and an elegant gown and rosy cheeks, he doesn’t think he’s ever felt it either. It’s too perplexing to contemplate with his arms full of Steve, so Bucky pushes it away.  
  
* * *


	8. Iris (Good News)

Early March brings back the tiny green beginnings of daffodils and tulips that Bucky waits for every year through the seemingly endless Winters. The tiny buds poke their way through the damp ground as the snow finally begins to recede. Days grow longer, and warmer, as the sun overhead casts increased warmth down onto them. Even on chillier mornings, the heat of the sun is still perceptible on Bucky’s dark clothing when in December and January, it wasn’t. The wind still whips wicked past his window in the night, the air that fills his lungs is still damp, the castle is still drafty when he isn’t seated right next to a fire. But it’s improving. Spring is on the horizon.  
  
On a Friday, Bucky dresses himself in the cloak and riding boots he’d asked Natasha to leave out in his rooms, observing himself briefly in the mirror before he departs for the stables. His hair is in need of a trim. It’s longer in the front and back and curling at the sides. No one has said anything. Usually his mother or one of his sisters will comment on such things, but Peggy has been distracted since Daniel arrived home. Bucky supposes that’s the way it should be. They are married, and will someday rule this kingdom together as Bucky fades into the background of public memory, one day to become a footnote of history. He’s still bitter about it, and not particularly pleased with himself for feeling that way.  
  
He brushes his hair back, pushing unkempt waves out of his eyes, and leaving the mirror to reflect his bedroom instead.  
  
Snow had turned to frozen rain, yesterday, so it’s been nearly two full days since Bucky has visited the horses and Thor. As he makes his way down the stone path, he notices movement and activity, on the far side of the structure. There are men working; wooden boards being lifted and slotted and nailed into place. The clatter of hammers is loud in the morning stillness, echoing around the vast open space of the fields beyond the animal enclosures. It only takes Bucky a moment to realize what’s being done, and he smiles to himself in satisfaction, once he does.  
  
He finds Thor in the enclosure with the goats, knelt on the thawing ground with his long white-blond hair falling messily down over his shoulders and over his eyes as he tends to a small animal. He looks up at the sound of Bucky’s footsteps approaching, and the goat, startled, brays and trots away. It’s small; a baby, that hurries to the protection of its mother.  
  
“New residents?” Bucky asks, smiling at Thor as he looks up. “Sorry for interrupting.”  
  
“You aren’t,” Thor assures, with a shake of his head. “Just checking to make sure they’re growing the way they should be, but that was my last patient.”  
  
“How many little ones are there?”  
  
“Three, this year.” Thor stands, bending down briefly to brush snow from his knees. When he straightens again, he regards Bucky with a funny look on his face, and gestures back toward the stables, where the construction continues. “This is your doing?”  
  
Unable to read his expression, Bucky hesitates, and the slight burn of worry rises in his throat. “I thought … I asked Hastings, if you could sleep indoors with the rest of them. He said you needed to be out here, to watch over the livestock. So I thought this was a solution.”  
  
Thor nods. His jaw clenches as he swallows. “The thing is … I should nod respectfully and thank you politely, but it doesn’t feel like enough.”  
  
“Oh.” Bucky shakes his head quickly. “You don’t have to – ”  
  
“I’ve never had a bed before,” Thor interrupts. Months ago, he never would have dreamed of cutting Bucky off partway through a sentence.  
  
Bucky barely notices. The words hit him instead, and he tries not to let his mouth fall open. “Never?”  
  
Thor shakes his head. His eyes are bright, greyish blue shining in the sunlight.  
  
It’s a moment before Bucky can gather his thoughts enough to respond without shouting up to the heavens about the injustice, which is what he very much wishes he could do. “I have had nothing but the most exquisite beds, since the day I was born. Simply because I was born to a king and queen, not because I have earned it. It’s inexpressibly unfair, that we live so differently, when you are every bit as good as I am. Perhaps better.”  
  
Thor’s head tilts to one side, and his jaw clenches again. “Could I … give you a hug?” he asks, tentative, like he’s expecting to be chastised for the proposal.  
  
Bucky’s entire chest rolls in an uncomfortable wave, and he nods fervently. “Of course. Yes, of course you can.”  
  
The larger man crashes into him, solid muscle and strong arms wrapping around him, and Bucky hugs him back as tightly as he can manage.  
  
“Thank you,” Thor says, his deep voice quiet and rough, and Bucky nods again.  
  
“Anything else you need,” he promises, “you tell me. And spread that around, as well, in the servants’ hall. If anyone else is lacking, in anything at all, I’ll have it fixed.”  
  
“I will.” Thor pulls back, blond eyebrows drawn into a frown as he looks down at Bucky. “Why are you doing this?”  
  
“Because you’re people,” Bucky answers, paraphrasing something Steve had told him once, ages ago. “You deserve to be treated much better than you are.”  
  
Thor exhales slowly, and doesn’t look like he knows what to say, so Bucky takes the option away from him.  
  
“Shall we ride?” he asks, nodding his head toward the next pen, where the horses are wandering slowly through the melting snow.  
  
Thor makes an abrupt noise of agreement, and smiles, and leads the way.  
  
* * *  
  
In the glasshouse, the African Amaryllis have green stalks about an inch high sticking up from the dirt. Bucky checks every day, eager to see what colors the flowers will be when they finally emerge. Steve often accompanies him. They haven’t spoken about Steve’s confession on the balcony, and it’s been just past three weeks. Bucky doesn’t bring it up in conversation because he doesn’t know what to say. He would listen if Steve wanted to talk, but Steve hasn’t brought it up either so they’ve been stuck in and endless loop of pretending the conversation didn’t happen.  
  
Sometimes Bucky hates that, other times he thinks it’s easier this way. The idea of Steve, in an alley behind a pub with a boy, makes Bucky’s stomach turn over itself, but it isn’t in disgust. He doesn’t understand what emotions he feels about it, and it’s been simpler to just push them away than attempt to dissect them. Bucky isn’t so sure he’d be happy about what he discovered if he thought about the whole thing for too long, so he tries to avoid it. He wants to tell Thor, just to have someone who isn’t Steve to discuss it with. Twice now, Bucky has caught himself almost spilling the secret. But he won’t. It isn’t his secret, so he has no right to spread it to anyone else.  
  
On a sunny Tuesday, Bucky is playing chess with Steve in the library. They dragged the stone chessboard over to the windows, so they could soak up the warmth while they play. A footman had rushed over to insist on helping them, but Bucky waved him away. After spending a lifetime being treated as if he’s barely capable of anything more difficult than lifting a fork to his mouth, he’s become satisfied by doing things for himself that he would never have done before Steve came here. Bucky was hungry the other day in mid-afternoon, so he found his way to the kitchens and helped himself to a piece of bread. He might not do that again – the kitchen maids nearly fainted when they saw him and the cook was tripping over her own feet in her haste to offer to make him something more substantial and he left the kitchen feeling like he wasn’t being respectful of their space and their rules. Even still, he likes the idea of slowly convincing the castle staff that they can treat him like a person when they see him, and not something delicate that needs to be coddled. Bucky didn’t miss the way Steve’s mouth curved into a small smile when he wouldn’t let the footman help them move the chessboard.  
  
Just as Steve announces his checkmate and Bucky concedes to half-annoying half-endearing gloating, Bucky’s sister enters the library and hurries over to them.  
  
“I won,” Steve tells Peggy, smiling smugly.  
  
“Good. It’s about time someone in this place could beat him, Bucky’s always been better than anyone and not shy about reminding us.”  
  
“That is not true, I have never been anything but gracious,” Bucky cuts in.  
  
“Whatever you say.” Peggy grins and her brown eyes twinkle. “I have good news. Becca is coming home.”  
  
Just for a second, Bucky doesn’t dare to believe it, in case it’s a trick. But Peggy doesn’t make jokes like that, and her expression is serious, and Bucky’s stomach flips over itself in excitement.   
  
“When?” he asks swiftly.  
  
“Soon. Her letter just arrived.”  
  
Bucky isn’t sure of what to say. He’d like to do a dance, or shout, or throw his arms around someone in happiness, but none of those things would be appropriate in the library. His smile is so wide it cuts into his cheeks, even after Peggy leaves them to their game – with a bounce in her step that suggests under her carefully cultivated regal composure, she’s excited too.  
  
“How long has she been gone?” Steve asks.  
  
“It feels like an eternity.” Bucky blows out a breath and turns his smile to Steve. “It was only supposed to be a month or two, but it’s been ages. She’d already been gone for weeks when you arrived.”  
  
“Is that good or bad, that she’s been gone for so long? For her, I mean, and the prince.”  
  
“I don’t know.” Bucky shakes his head. Deep, deep down inside, in places he won’t even show to Steve, Bucky secretly hopes that Becca’s extended trip meant her courtship did not go well, and she’s finally returning home now having realized it’s a bad match and calling the whole thing off. It’s a horrible thing to wish, that what is supposed to be a happy time in his sister’s life ended up unravelling. It’s also highly unlikely, but Bucky wishes it all the same even though he knows the chances of it being true are slim.  
  
“Did she have any choice in it?” Steve asks. “If it turned out they hated each other, could she refuse?”  
  
“I suppose so, in the sense that no one is going to tie her up and force her to marry him. But it would have been complicated.”  
  
“Pressure isn’t always physical,” Steve says, and Bucky understands he isn’t only talking about Becca. Then, he shakes his head a bit as if to clear it, and his smile returns. “Listen, this is fantastic news, we shouldn’t make it gloomy so fast. You’ve missed her like mad and she’s coming home!”  
  
Bucky nods again and feels his own smile all the way down to his toes.  
  
* * *  
  
The King organizes a full compliment to welcome Rebecca to the castle, which seems ridiculous to Bucky because she lived here for her entire life except for the last few months so she isn’t a guest that needs to be impressed, but he doesn’t say so. He stands obediently between Steve and Peggy, watching as the procession of carriages approaches and his heart beats a little harder against his ribcage than it should. When Becca’s carriage finally slows to a stop in front of them, Bucky feels a large hand briefly wrap around his and squeeze for just a moment before falling away. It makes something odd flutter in his chest, to know that Steve is as excited for Bucky as Bucky is for himself.  
  
Footmen rush to open the carriage door and unroll the metal steps, and she steps out. Her long chestnut hair is twisted into an elegant knot at the back of her head; her coat is a sunny yellow and the long skirt underneath a deep plum. She looks both entirely the same as when Bucky said goodbye to her last Autumn and yet somehow different, as if she’s experienced life in a way that makes her look older and wiser. Probably, Bucky is being dramatic. It’s silly that he’s expecting she’ll be a different person after all this time, simply because she’s been in France courting a foreign prince. They likely didn’t so much as hold hands, or if they did, not without twenty chaperones watching their every move, so she hasn’t experienced any more of life than Bucky has.  
  
“My darling,” their mother gushes, reaching her middle child first and laughing as she envelopes her in an unceremoniously generous hug. She should have just kissed her cheek stoically, but Becca never followed the rules as rigidly as anyone wanted.  
  
“Welcome home,” the King says formally, and Becca shakes his hand firmly.  
  
“Thank you, Sir.”  
  
“How was your journey? Not too horrible, I hope.” Winifred won’t let go of her arm, like she’s afraid if she does Becca will get back into her carriage and leave them again just as she’s arrived. “Come inside, are you hungry?”  
  
As she’s hustled into the house, Becca’s grey eyes meet Bucky’s and she winks.  
  
Servants bustle about, collecting the cases and leading the horses away. A few of the housemaids give warm, friendly greetings to Becca’s maid, now that the King is no longer watching and they’re allowed to be casual.  
  
“She looks like you,” Steve tells Bucky.  
  
“Everyone says that,” Bucky answers. He takes a deep breath, and follows his family back into the castle, with Steve following closely behind.  
  
* * *  
  
It isn’t until well after the sun has gone down and his parents have retired to their chambers for the night, that Bucky finally gets a moment alone with his sister.  
  
Winifred has been fussing over her since the moment she arrived, and a formal dinner to celebrate her return saw their dining room filled once again with nobles from neighbouring counties and their elegantly dressed wives. Bucky wonders whether these people have anything better to do with their lives, than be at the King’s beck and call for spontaneous dinner parties.  
  
Becca was forced to recount how splendidly her courtship had gone and was treated to countless toasts in her honor and to the future partnership her marriage will bring between their own kingdom and the one where she’ll soon live. Her future husband has an older brother, so Becca will not rule over anyone, but, as their father grandly announces, sounding unusually jovial and insufferably satisfied with himself, her presence there will bring peace and mutual advantage for years to come. Her life seems to be nothing more than a negotiation.  
  
It’s passed midnight by the time most of their guests have left and the ones staying the night have gone to bed. Steve stuck close to Bucky for the evening, turning down three requests to dance and earning himself dirty looks from all sides for doing so. If he noticed, Steve didn’t seem to care. When the party winds down, Steve touches Bucky’s arm as he excuses himself to his rooms, with a strange smile on his face. It might be sympathetic – silently consoling Bucky over the fact that his sister is undoubtedly back for such a short time before she’s gone for good. Or it might be something else. Bucky can’t tell.  
  
He catches Becca’s eyes from across the hall, as she’s theatrically thanking the last of the guests for coming. Once they’ve made their exit, she nods toward the doors at the end of the room, that lead outside to the expansive balcony that overlooks the garden maze and the fountains, where Bucky’s had a few important conversations in the last few weeks. Bucky meets her there, the crisp Spring air hitting his flushed cheeks and cooling them. Once they’re outside and finally, blissfully, alone, Becca wraps Bucky up in the tightest embrace. Bucky clings to her and feels the hug in his soul.  
  
“Damn it, I missed you,” she breathes.  
  
“You shouldn’t swear,” Bucky reminds her, but he doesn’t really care at all. “Damn it, I missed you more. I hated being stuck here without you.”  
  
She pulls back and looks up into Bucky’s eyes, and smiles. “I hope you caused a bit of trouble in my absence. We both know Peggy won’t have done anything to liven this place up.”  
  
“I went into the kitchens the other day. The cook nearly had a fit.”  
  
Becca laughs, loud and bright. “What a rebel. I promise not to report you.”  
  
“Tell me about you,” Bucky urges. “How was France? Are you happy to be home?”  
  
She leans her elbows onto the railing and Bucky mimics it. So many times he’s stood just like this with Steve, on one of the castle’s many balconies, overlooking the land and the night sky and discussing things they wouldn’t bring up with anyone else. It wasn’t until just this moment that Bucky realized why he’s loved those conversations so much. He understands suddenly that they reminded him of what he had with Becca, and what he lost when she went away.  
  
“Beautiful. Cold in the Winter, like here. They say it’s deadly hot in the Summer, worse than what we’re used to. I’m not sure how I’ll survive.”  
  
“You are going to … go back, then. To live there, permanently.” Bucky always knew that, but there’s still a twinge of sadness to have it confirmed.  
  
“I am. He proposed. Just before I left. The wedding is next month.”  
  
Bucky swallows over the lump that builds in his throat. “A few short weeks, then. That’s what I have left with you until …”  
  
“I’m not dying, Bucky. I’ll only be a few days’ journey away, you can visit me as often as you like.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Bucky shakes his head and curses himself for being so selfish. “This is a good moment for you, and I’m making it about myself. I am happy for you, honestly.”  
  
“It’s not easy, this thing where we have to grow up and everything has to change. Is it?”  
  
“No, it isn’t.” Bucky sighs and blinks up at the stars. They’re blurred slightly in the cloud cover, but still bright enough to count. He wishes they could lay on their backs in the grass and do just that, like they used to when they were little and everything was simple. “Do you love him?”  
  
“I think so. He’s really … he’s very kind, and he’s wickedly funny when his family isn’t around to scold him for being ungentlemanly. You’ll like him, too. I know you will.”  
  
“Aren’t you angry at all, that you’re being forced to marry him?”  
  
“I’m not being forced anything,” Becca answers with a small, amused laugh. “Maybe my options are fewer than some but this is how things are done, Bucky. And when it comes down to it … he’s lovely. He’s the sort of person I would have picked, if I were allowed to have anyone in the world. So where’s the wrong in it?”  
  
“Steve always talks about … all the choices that other people have. All the ways that our lives don’t belong to us.”  
  
“Is that what he’s like? I barely had a chance to say more than how-do-you-do to him before I was whisked away.”  
  
“He’s nice. He’s made me realize … a lot of things. But he’s nice.”  
  
“What sort of things?”  
  
The question makes Bucky’s skin prickle, because he isn’t completely sure what he meant by that even though the words came out of his own mouth. “It doesn’t matter. It’s been good, having him here. Made it so that I wasn’t so alone.”  
  
“You won’t ever be alone,” Becca promises. She puts her arm around Bucky’s back and tugs him in close again. “One day, sooner than you think, you’ll meet someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with. Think of the fun we’ll have, you and me, and our families. There will be parties where you and I sneak off and spend the entire night hiding out and talking, like we used to. Our children will be best friends. Things will be different from now on, but they won’t be bad. You’ll see.”  
  
Bucky nods and smiles, and doesn’t for even an instant believe any of that is true.  
  
* * *


	9. Pansy (Free Thinker)

Her face across the breakfast table, in the chair that had been empty for months while she was away, means Bucky can’t stop smiling into his eggs. She’s framed by luscious bouquets of yellow roses in Bucky’s field of vision, long brown curls cascading over her shoulders, grey eyes shining in the sunlight as she smiles back.  
  
“What are your plans today, my darlings?” their mother asks, sipping daintily from a china teacup with a blue floral pattern.  
  
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll get up to trouble of some kind,” Becca answers, grinning at Bucky as the King clears his throat at the head of the table. He doesn’t speak, though. He’s always been hard on all three of them, but maintains something of a soft-spot for Becca.  
  
On Bucky’s left, Steve coughs around a mouthful of food going down the wrong way, and then grimaces apologetically at them.  
  
“I’ll be meeting with the council at midday, and won’t be able to join you for luncheon,” the King says, before turning to Peggy and asking her to join him.  
  
“Of course,” Peggy answers tactfully. “What is the topic of today’s discussion?”  
  
“Petty land disputes. Sir Doyle has discovered gemstones in the bedrock beneath the wood at the edge of his estate, and since the land borders on Sir Taylor’s and there isn’t a hard line between them, they both believe they have some claim to it,” the King sighs, sounding bored by it. Bucky doesn’t blame him. He’s never envied his sister for her future of dealing with all that.  
  
“Do they?” Peggy asks, sounding far more interested than Bucky would be.  
  
“Unfortunately, I believe they do, although Doyle is not going to be pleased to hear it.”  
  
“I do hope it can all be sorted without too many hurt feelings.” Winifred smiles at her husband from across the table. He returns it, although to Bucky it appears stilted.  
  
Next to him, Steve is smirking down at his plate and seems to be trying very hard not to. Bucky moves his leg over, knocking Steve’s knee under the table with his own, and Steve bites his lower lip and knocks back.  
  
The King gets up first, nodding politely at Winifred and not acknowledging the rest of them as he makes his way to the hall, followed by a footman. Another footman clears his plate. They chat about nothing for a few more minutes, before Peggy asks to be excused and follows their father, with Winifred and Daniel close behind her. Winifred leans over and kisses Becca’s hair before she goes, and there’s something wistful in her expression as she glances back at them just before disappearing through the doorway.  
  
“What _should_ we do today?” Becca asks, once they’re alone.  
  
“You don’t want to join in the ruckus over disputed gemstones?” Steve asks, dry and sarcastic. He seems to realize, just as the words finish making their way from his lips, that he barely knows Bucky’s middle sister and can’t be sure she’ll understand his tone and not find him rude.  
  
Bucky knows her, however, and isn’t surprised at all by her burst of laughter.  
  
“I think I would rather be burnt at the stake. I don’t envy Peggy a lifetime of this sort of thing,” Becca laughs, to a visibly relieved Steve.  
  
Bucky remembers the young man who arrived here months ago, who never would even have considered whether someone else might be offended by his comments. He wonders if Steve has changed, or if he cares what Becca thinks because he knows how much she means to Bucky.  
  
“Tragically, it is my future as well,” Steve points out.  
  
“I am very sorry to hear that,” Becca responds, “although I don’t doubt you’ll find some way to keep yourself entertained.”  
  
Steve raises an eyebrow. “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or offended.”  
  
“Perhaps both,” Becca says, with a playful shrug that makes Steve laugh.  
  
“I do actually have something we could do today.” Bucky hadn’t wanted to say it in front of their parents, but now that they’re gone, he reveals the news he’d received early this morning via an anonymous note left outside his chamber doors. “Thor’s cabin is finished and he wondered if we’d come for tea. _Lower ourselves_ to letting him serve us tea, I believe was his exact wording.”  
  
Steve huffs.  
  
“I know,” Bucky agrees, cringing. Change is slow, he supposes. It took him long enough to realize he needed to be kinder to those who devote their lives to serving the palace, so it must still feel risky for someone like Thor to be treating a member of the royal family as a friend, going against everything in his training. As an afterthought, to Becca, Bucky adds, “Thor is the man who runs the stables.”  
  
“I know who he is,” she says, with a small smile that surprises Bucky. “What cabin?”  
  
“Bucky tried to get him a room within the castle,” Steve explains. He’d been so happy, when Bucky told him. He’d smiled bigger than Bucky’s ever seen. “But couldn’t, so instead he had a cabin built for him, next to the stables. So he has a real place to live.”  
  
Becca’s eyebrows raise, her eyes wide and impressed. “Does Father know?”  
  
“He must. Although I never discussed it with him, and he hasn’t mentioned it.”  
  
“Have you been replaced by a highly convincing look-a-like?” Becca asks, feigning concern and reaching across the table for Bucky’s hand. “Have you had a fever?”  
  
“Amusing,” Bucky mutters, taking his hand back as Becca and Steve chuckle at his expense. Then he winces, and asks, “was I really that awful to them? Before?”  
  
“You behaved as we were taught to behave,” Becca says simply, as if that’s any excuse. Bucky’s not sure it is, even though he’s grateful for the reassurance. “I’m glad to see you’ve learned we were wrong.”  
  
“So you’ll come with us and Steve’s valet, then? To see Thor?”  
  
“Of course I will. I’d be honored.”  
  
* * *  
  
Natasha is gathering clothing to be laundered from the basket in his closet when Bucky gets back to his rooms. The curtains are drawn over his tall windows to block out the mid-morning sun, and the room is dark with none of the lamps lit. Bucky smiles at her in greeting, and she returns it as she transfers the basket to rest on her hip so her other hand is free to brush stray hairs away from her face.  
  
“Did you have a nice breakfast?” she asks.  
  
“Yes.” Bucky fishes in the drawer of his bedside table for a match to light the lamp that sits on top of it. “There’s quite a bit of baking left over, if you get downstairs quickly the cook might let you have some of it.”  
  
Natasha gives him an odd look. “They do feed us, you know. You don’t have to dole out table scraps.”  
  
Bucky feels badly immediately, and feels the color drain from his face. “I’m sorry, that was presumptuous.”  
  
“It’s alright.” Natasha shakes her head. She sets the basket down onto the rug and goes about making up Bucky’s still-messy bedclothes. “I should’ve had this done by the time you got back.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” he assures her. He crosses the room, taking a seat on his blue velvet sofa by the fireplace and pondering over a stack of books on the coffee table. He’d taken them out weeks ago, from the Great Library, and hasn’t so much as cracked the cover on a single one. Too much else has been happening, for him to want to curl up in his room and read for hours on end like he used it.  
  
“Are you happy to have the Princess back?” Natasha asks.  
  
Bucky twists in his seat, resting his elbows on the back of the sofa so he can look at her while they speak. “I am. I missed her.”  
  
“I know.” Natasha’s smile is sympathetic, as she fluffs his pillows. “How long? Before she’s off again?”  
  
“Less than a month.”  
  
With another sad smile, she exhales slowly. “I am sorry to hear that. I know how much she means to you.”  
  
“It’s the way of the world. Or so I’m told.”  
  
“It is, but that doesn’t mean you’re required to be happy about it.”  
  
“Where’s your family?” Bucky asks, uncomfortable still every time he realizes how little he knows about the people with whom he shares his life. He sees Natasha every single day, and has for nearly a decade, and knows almost nothing about her.  
  
“In the village,” she answers. “I don’t have any siblings. But my parents are alive. My father is a shoemaker. My mother helps out around his shop.”  
  
“Do you ever see them?”  
  
“Of course I do,” she says, with another peculiar look, as if it’s curious to her that Bucky didn’t know that. “I get the odd afternoon off to go into the village, and they visit when they can.”  
  
“You could have an entire day, sometimes. I could arrange it.”  
  
“But who would look after you?”  
  
“I could make my own bed,” Bucky says, before he realizes she was joking.  
  
“Do you know how?” she asks, green eyes twinkling.  
  
“No,” Bucky admits, laughing at himself. “But I could learn.”  
  
“I’m sure you could. It isn’t difficult.” She smooths her hands over the quilt, now neatly arranged in a lateral fold at the foot of his bed, ready for him to pull up over his shoulders come nightfall. She picks up the laundry basket, then, and makes to leave, but turns back to him before she does. “I don’t want you getting yourself in trouble on my account. But that would be nice, if you could arrange it.”  
  
“I will,” Bucky promises.  
  
Only minutes after she’s gone, a sharp knock at his door startles him, followed before Bucky can even get up with Steve’s voice calling for him. “Are you coming?”  
  
Bucky hurries over and pulls the door open. “Already?”  
  
“Sam went down to tell him we’d be coming, apparently he’s quite eager.” Steve grins at him, the full-faced kind that sends the flesh of his cheeks upwards and causes his eyes to nearly disappear.  
  
“Alright, let me grab a cloak.”  
  
“Would you like me to summon a footman, or can you button it yourself?” Steve teases.  
  
Bucky laughs, but still glares at him, on principle. “You’re an ass.”  
  
He finds a forest-green garment with yellow trimming in his closet, and wraps his around his shoulders, fastening the hook at the front, across the top of his chest. Steve is still smiling when Bucky turns back to him, golden and luminous in the low light, seeming to cast out a glow around him that only Bucky can see. The surly, unhappy boy who arrived here not of his own free-will months ago has retired completely, and now Steve is nothing but sunshine. He’s changed everything. Because he can’t resist, before they leave the room Bucky takes Steve by the elbow and pulls him into a hug. He smells like soap, fresh and warm. Steve seems caught off guard just for a moment but then returns it, his arms going tightly around Bucky’s back and his nose running just briefly through Bucky’s hair.  
  
“What’s this for?” he asks softly.  
  
“Nothing.” Bucky shakes his head and doesn’t move out of the embrace. “Just wanted to.”  
  
* * *  
  
The four of them make their way down the sloped stone path, a light spring drizzle falling onto their heads and leaving them all damp and chilled by the time they reach the stables at the bottom of the hill. Thor’s new cabin is small, modest even as far as it’s servants’ quarters, but he’d been so pleased by it the last time Bucky saw him, a few days back when it was nearing completion. He’s outside waiting for them, long white-blond hair tied back with a length of twine, his clothing tidier than Bucky thinks he’s ever seen it, as if he specifically laundered them for the situation. The tiny wave he gives them as they approach puts a sharp pain in Bucky’s chest.  
  
“Your Highness,” he says, in surprise, to Becca, even though by the words alone he could be addressing Steve or Bucky as well.  
  
“Mr. Odinson.” She extends her gloved hand, shaking his heartily. “Lovely to see you again.”  
  
“I didn’t realize you would be joining us.”  
  
“I hope that’s alright?”  
  
He nods quickly, flustered. “Yes! Of course. Welcome home.”  
  
“Thank you.” Her smile widens, and she nods behind them, toward the wooden structure. “The same to you, welcome home.”  
  
Thor flushes, somewhere between flattered and embarrassed.  
  
“Let’s get out of the rain,” Sam says decisively, going for the door and letting himself in without preamble.  
  
Steve follows him, and Thor holds his hand out, gesturing for Becca to cross in front of him. “After you.”  
  
“Such a gentleman,” Becca says, a friendly tease, and follows the others inside.  
  
Thor’s piercing blue eyes fall on Bucky. “I am certainly not a gentleman.”  
  
“I’ve met some of the finest men on the continent and half of them were insufferable,” Bucky tells him. “I don’t think it much matters what you are, so long as you’re kind.”  
  
Thor presses his lips together, and gestures at his new residence. “Thank you, for this. I slept better last night than I think I ever have in my life.”  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “You’re welcome, but you’ve thanked me enough. I’m only sorry it took someone this long to figure you deserved a real bed. Now, come, show us around.”  
  
“It won’t take long,” Thor says, as he and Bucky cross the threshold.  
  
Bucky sees what he means. The cabin is a single room. There is a wooden bed in the corner that looks barely large enough to contain the large man it was built for, but the pillow looks plush and the blankets soft and warm. A wooden chest occupies the space at the foot of the bed, and there are hooks on the walls where shabbier items of clothing are hung. A small woodstove sits in the corner on curved feet, with a stone hearth in front of it to catch errant sparks. The charcoal-colored ventilation pipe bends toward the wall and exits out through a round hole in the wood, next to a wide window. There is a tarnished kettle sitting on the stove, a small shelf with a few other cooking implements, and a pile of firewood next to it on the floor. In the opposite corner is a table, barely big enough for two but with three simple chairs.  
  
“It isn’t much, nothing like what you’re used to,” Thor says, with a wince, as if he’s embarrassed to have the presence of royalty in his meager dwelling. Then he seems to realize the statement could be interpreted as ungrateful, and rushes to tell Bucky, “but it’s more than I’ve ever had, and I’m so thankful for it.”  
  
Bucky leans over to bump his much smaller shoulder into Thor’s. “You’re alright. No one’s offended.”  
  
“I have some dishes,” Thor says, pointing to the trunk at the foot of his bed. “I’ll still eat in the hall with the others most of the time, but enough that I could heat some leftovers if they let me take them. And a few books! I can’t read, but one of the Queen’s maids … Jane … she says she’s going to teach me.”  
  
“I know Jane,” Becca says. “She’s a lovely girl.”  
  
Thor’s cheeks darken further. “She is.”  
  
“You’ll be reading Shakespeare to the horses before you know it,” Steve says, offering him a genuine smile.  
  
“Are you happy with it?” Becca asks.  
  
Thor nods fervently. “Very much.”  
  
“Then it’s perfect.”  
  
He nods again, and then loudly says, “tea!” and nearly trips over his own feet on his way around Sam toward the stove. He roughly grabs the iron kettle and leaves the cabin in a flurry of hair and flushed cheeks, heading outside to fill it.  
  
“You’ve done well,” Becca tells Bucky.  
  
“It’s still so small,” Bucky says, trying to keep the regret from his voice.  
  
Becca rubs his arm. “Did you see him? He’s overjoyed. You couldn’t have built him a palace anyway, even if you’d wanted to. Some things aren’t within our control. You did well.”  
  
Bucky nods, and looks up to see Steve smiling at him.  
  
Thor returns with a full kettle, setting it on the stove and stoking the fire within. He holds his hands out, toward the table, and tells them, “sit, please.”  
  
Bucky hesitates to take the last chair after Steve and Becca sit around the table, and Sam plops himself down happily on Thor’s bed so Bucky sits next to him instead, leaving the final place at the table for Thor. The larger man seems flustered about it, but Bucky insists he shouldn’t have to give up the last seat in his own house. Thor looks so proud and pleased at hearing the cabin described as _his_ that he doesn’t argue back. He serves them tea in plain, chipped cups, that accomplish the task just as well as the expensive, impeccable china Bucky eats off of in the dining room. The small space is quickly filled with laughter, and Thor smiles so wide Bucky wonders if his face might stick permanently in the expression. The ache in his chest is replaced with warmth.  
  
Later, while he’s in the stable with Merlin and running a comb through his glossy main, he overhears his sister speaking with Steve by the far entrance. They’re talking about him, Bucky realizes after a moment, and crouches down behind the half-wall to eavesdrop properly, even as a tremor of guilt flutters through his stomach over doing so.  
  
“I’ve been afraid to leave him here,” Becca is admitting, her voice low and regretful. “Afraid of … what might happen, if he was alone. Of course he wouldn’t be _alone_ , but our father’s never had much time for him. Thinks he’s soft. And our mother babies him, because he _was_ soft, as a boy. And Peggy and Daniel have so many responsibilities.”  
  
Bucky should probably be offended by some of that, but finds he can’t be, because it’s all true. He stares down at his own hands, folded on top of his knees.  
  
“He’s stronger than everybody thinks,” Steve replies, and Bucky’s heart skips several beats. No one has ever said that about him.  
  
“I know he is. I’ve always known that. I’m so happy you see it, too.”  
  
Whatever Steve says in response, Bucky can’t hear, and he frowns, leaning closer still to catch the tail end of Becca’s next sentence.  
  
“… changed so much, just in the few months I’ve been gone. I think maybe we have you to thank for that.”  
  
“I’m not sure I did very much.”  
  
“You did quite a lot,” Becca argues. “I can see it. You’ve been so good for him. And Thor and Sam as well. I’ve never seen him so confident. I feel much better about it all after today. Things can’t be the same as they always were anymore, but I know he’ll be alright. So … thank you.”  
  
“Of course,” Steve’s voice answers, and Bucky sinks to his seat on the hay and tips his head back to rest against the wall, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly, eyes slipping closed for a long moment.  
  
* * *


	10. Cyclamen (Sorrowful Parting)

The journey to France is to be the first time in his entire life that Bucky has ever ventured away from the castle grounds.  
  
When he was young, his parents used to embark on diplomatic tours. Sometimes they would be gone for months, and Bucky and Rebecca and Peggy were never allowed to go along. Bucky never wanted to, necessarily, but wasn’t given a choice either way. In recent years, Peggy has been allowed to accompany their father in place of the Queen. And of course, Becca has now left as well. Bucky is the last of them for whom this is a first. He has wondered for years what lay beyond the towering stone walls that surround his father’s vast lands. Now, as he’s finally standing on the precipice of finding out, he might rather feign an illness and avoid it altogether.  
  
On a Thursday, in heavy, foreboding rain, he watches as servants load heavy cases into luggage carriages, struggling to keep from slipping in the mud and dropping the cargo. Steve stands next to him. Normally, Steve would offer to help, especially when no one but Bucky is around to see him do so. This time, he doesn’t. He stays motionless at Bucky’s side, golden hair falling across his forehead as a cold breeze washes over them. They’d gone down together to the stables earlier, to let Thor know they’d be away for two weeks and to ask him to take extra care of Bucky’s horse. It’s Thor’s job to do just that, but Bucky felt silly admitting he wanted to say goodbye to his friend so he invented an excuse to visit. He’s not sure Thor didn’t see through it.  
  
Steve’s valet will be accompanying them, and he appears beside them in the doorway, with one final case. Steve greets him with a kind smile, and leaves Bucky to assist Sam with the heavy luggage. Bucky’s stomach twists in unease as he watches them get soaked in the downpour. Steve is going to be cold, once they’re travelling and he’s sitting there in wet clothes. After a moment, Bucky realizes Sam will be as well, and then his stomach twists further over the fact that it came to him as an afterthought.   
  
It’s possible Bucky is dreading the impending wedding more than he’s ever dread anything before.  
  
The King sweeps dramatically into the hall, flanked as always by harried footmen, and makes a lot of noise about how much they’re running late. Winifred bustles out the front doors after him, a maid hurrying after her with a large umbrella, and smiles kindly at the footman who helps her into the carriage before the King joins her and the doors are latched. Becca, Peggy, and Daniel climb into the next carriage, and Bucky gets into a third one with Steve. Bucky had assumed Steve would ride with his valet as he did on his journey here from his home, but Sam had said, with a knowing smile that made Bucky uncomfortable, he would ride with some of the other staff accompanying them and Bucky could ride with Steve. Bucky was pleased, as since Becca’s return, he’s seen much less of Steve. But he still wasn’t sure what to make of the way Sam looked at him.  
  
Steve is wet, as they settle in the carriage, and Bucky shakes his head at him as he drips on the floor.  
  
“What?” Steve asks, halfway between defensive, and laughing at himself, because he knows very well what.  
  
“Can’t help yourself, can you?”  
  
“Sam needed a hand.”  
  
“Sam shouldn’t have been doing it either. The people who are staying behind can change into dry clothes now that we’ve left,” Bucky points out. “You can’t.”  
  
Steve smirks at him and then shakes his head like a wet dog, spraying water droplets all over Bucky, who laughs and protests loudly. The smile on Steve’s face as he watches Bucky wipe rain from his face is brighter than the most brilliant sunrise.  
  
The journey is long, with seemingly endless days on bumpy roads and even longer nights spent in various castles along the way belonging to neighbouring nobles, most of whom Bucky has never heard of. Every one of them greets their wayfaring party with elegant dinners and wine and music and while it’s kind of them to put on such a show, Bucky is always exhausted by the time night falls and just wants to sleep.  
  
As the heir to his own kingdom, Steve swept up into it all along with Peggy. Bucky had nearly managed to forget, at least on the surface, that one day Steve will be a king. He’s reminded starkly as Steve and Bucky’s eldest sister are both expected to socialize, and engage in diplomacy, to shake hands and dance and laugh at terrible jokes and spread around general goodwill that will benefit them politically when the time comes for them to take their thrones. Bucky watches Steve as he does it, and sees shades returning of the boy he met when Steve first arrived. Peggy is a natural at this sort of thing; Steve, to anyone who knows him well, isn’t. As Bucky well knows Steve can be gracious and kind and warm, but seems almost physically incapable of strategy or subterfuge. When he genuinely enjoys the company of the person he’s talking to, he does alright, but when he doesn’t, he becomes sullen and withdrawn in a way Bucky hasn’t seen him since they became friends. He can see, for the first time in a long time, what Steve means when he says about himself that he isn’t cut out to rule a kingdom. It breaks Bucky’s heart.  
  
By their third day on the road, Bucky is used to the rumble of the wheels beneath their carriage and the endless early-Spring grey of the countryside beyond the windows. He plays cards with Steve and talks to him and laughs with him, and it feels closer to the normal he’s become accustomed to over the last several months. Steve has such a nice laugh. For at least a few hours every day, he almost forgets where they’re going and why.  
  
The castle finally appears in the distance. The pale stone structure is nestled amongst rolling hills of farmland, and Bucky’s eyes go wide as he looks at it. Much larger than their own, it sprawls across grounds of lawns and gardens that will likely be spectacular come the Summer months but are already far greener than the pastures back from where their party has come. And much, much more vast. After their procession passes through the heavily guarded gate, it’s still nearly another hour before they even reach the front door.  
  
“This is where Rebecca is going to live?” Steve asks, his expression just as astonished as Bucky’s sure his own is. His eyes, blue as a Summer sky, are as wide as saucers as he stares out the window on his side of the carriage.  
  
“Not permanently,” Bucky answers. He fears his eyebrows will disappear forever into the hair that falls across his forehead as he takes in their new surroundings. “Henri has an older brother, remember, so this place will be his when he inherits the crown. Becca said a castle is being built for them, nearby. It won’t be as enormous as this one.”  
  
“Still a castle. Some people live in mud huts.”  
  
Bucky stares at him. “Where?”  
  
“Everywhere.” Steve smiles his familiar patient smile, the one that graces his features when he’s trying not to tease Bucky for how little he knows about the world.  
  
An extensive compliment of royals and nobles and servants greets them as their carriages finally arrive. Becca, unrefined and unladylike in a manor that is likely to annoy the King, darts from her carriage and falls into the arms of a man in a burgundy waistcoat, who hugs her back tightly just for a moment before collecting himself and kissing her hand primly instead. Bucky swallows over a lump in his throat.  
  
He trails behind his family as they are welcomed theatrically, in full regal splendour obviously meant to both impress and intimidate. Bucky’s own father is a master of that tactic, but even he might be outdone by the majesty of this place. Translators with heavy accents chase around after them, allowing dialogue between the two families. Becca’s future husband Henri is tall and shy, with copper-colored hair and deep dimples in his smile, and he speaks both languages well enough to help with interpretation. His smile is kind and his eyes are bright and to his own internal dissatisfaction, Bucky instantly likes him. He’d secretly wanted the man to be horrible, but he isn’t, and that only serves to make everything harder.  
  
Inside the castle, vast rooms, carved in marble and draped in velvet, are decorated with more scarlet roses than Bucky’s ever seen in one place. Red swaths of them hang from every available hook and sconce, tied into wreaths and wrapped into garland. They look like blood dripping from the walls.  
  
* * *  
  
The morning of Becca’s wedding day, Bucky is in a dressing room with his sisters and Becca’s maid. Peggy asks the questions Bucky imagines any sister would ask on a wedding day; if Becca is nervous, if she’s ready for it all, if she knows how proud she’s made them. Once the maid leaves them, it occurs to Bucky that this could be the very last time the three of them are alone together, and the thought burns in the back of his throat.  
  
Peggy spent much of their childhood off with their father learning to rule, but she was still their sister. She was still excited with them on Christmas morning, she still played hide-and-seek in the hedge maze, she still snuck with them out of their bedrooms to the railing at the top of the stairs during parties their parents hosted, to spy on all the guests in their tails and glittery gowns. She patiently taught Bucky to read, when his nanny gave up because he put up too much of a fuss. She was the one Bucky sought out in the early hours of the morning when he’d had a nightmare. And Rebecca has been Bucky’s friend, his confidant, the only person on this earth until recently with whom Bucky’s ever felt a real sense of belonging. It aches deep in his chest to think his life as he’s known it will be forever altered after today.  
  
“Good luck,” he tells Becca anyway, and hugs her close. Peggy wraps her arms around them both, and for just a moment Bucky is eight years old again, and his sisters mean the entire world to him, and everything is exactly as it should be.  
  
Far too soon, it ends.  
  
“I’m going to check on Mother,” Peggy says, kissing Becca’s cheek and grinning as she leaves the room.  
  
“Are you really happy for me?” Becca asks wryly. She’s so beautiful. Her dress is cream and lace and her deep brown curls are arranged just so underneath a delicate veil. Bucky wants so badly to be a kinder person, so he could be truly happy for her instead of devastated.  
  
He hates that it feels like a lie when he answers, “I am. He seems nice.”  
  
“He is. And yours will be to, whoever she is. You’ll find her soon enough.”  
  
“What if … I didn’t?”  
  
“Didn’t what?”  
  
“Didn’t end up in the kind of life that you will. Didn’t have children for yours to play with, didn’t get married at all?”  
  
For a long, agonizing moment, Becca doesn’t respond. She stares out the window over the trees, silent and contemplative, and Bucky panics inside but does his best to keep it from showing on his face. Finally, when she speaks, it’s slow and deliberate, as if she’s straining to keep from saying what she would truly like to say. “Your life is yours, Bucky.”  
  
Bucky scoffs. “Is it?”  
  
“Yes,” Becca answers, gentle but forceful. “I know what you think.”  
  
“What do I think?”  
  
“We’ve said it all before. You think that I’m being forced to marry. You think that Peggy was forced to marry Daniel. You think that you’ll be forced to marry as well, when the time comes. You think that none of us had any say in the matter, as if we were prisoners in our own bodies, and you think these things because if they were true, it would be easier to accept that I’m leaving. But you’re wrong.”  
  
Emotion wells up in the back of Bucky’s throat once again, and he grits his teeth to keep it at bay.  
  
“I love you, so very much,” Becca says, as one hand comes up to rest on Bucky’s neck. “And I will miss you, now that we won’t see each other every day. But we’re grown now, and this is the way of the world, and I also love him. I’m not being forced to marry him, I _want_ to marry him. Perhaps I don’t have the freedom to choose anyone on the face of the earth, but there is a lot of ground between that and having no choice at all. You can make choices too.”  
  
Bucky nods and hates that tears spring to his eyes.  
  
“It’s alright.” She hugs him, and Bucky squeezes his sister tightly again and wishes he’d never have to let go.  
  
“I just wish we didn’t have to say goodbye.”  
  
“Then we won’t. When you leave, we’ll say ‘See you soon’. Because we will.”  
  
“Alright.” Bucky tries desperately to make himself believe it.  
  
The service is as nice as Bucky knew it would be. In the evening, in an enormous ballroom packed with guests in their finest jewels and most elegant outfits, Becca is led to the centre of the floor with her gloved hand in Henri’s and he wraps her into an embrace to lead her in their first dance as husband and wife. Bucky watches them, his mouth drying out as he can’t seem to swallow properly all of a sudden. They float across the dancefloor, fitting together like verses in a poem, moving to the sweeping orchestral music as easy as breathing. Beyond the pair of them, his eyes land on Steve, on the other side of the room. He’s in full regal finery, as Bucky is, with a golden crown and blue velvet trimmings. He’s watching Becca and Henri as well; stars in his eyes that Bucky can perceive even from yards away and a lovely flush to his cheeks. He’s beautiful.  
  
He’s _beautiful_.  
  
Tremors shoot through Bucky like static shocks. He wants to run, to hide in some remote corner of the castle. At the same time, he wants to stay, to gaze at Steve for hours, to ask him to dance so that Bucky could, for the first time in his life, know what it’s like to be held in the way his sisters have been by their husbands. He wants to believe that they _did_ marry for love, despite what he’s thought. Bucky has never been loved. He never expected to be. Like a bolt of lightening, he wonders what it would be like.  
  
There are feasts every evening for a week, and from what Bucky can see of the village beyond the castle grounds, the people are celebrating as well. It’s all extravagant and joyous, and he even has a little bit of fun despite himself. He dances and enjoys the music and the festivities. It’s easy to forget, in the exuberant atmosphere, the things he’s unhappy about. It isn’t until they leave, and as promised Becca says _see you soon_ , that it all comes back to Bucky and leaves him depressed as their carriages turn down the driveway and head in the opposite direction.  
  
Steve doesn’t say anything for a while, he just lets Bucky brood. A few hours in he must get sick of the tense silence all at once because he abruptly closes his book and slams it down in his lap. The sound makes Bucky jump.  
  
“You are aware that you’re being ridiculous, right?” Steve asks sharply.  
  
Maybe he’s expecting Bucky to snap back and for them to fight, but in truth, Bucky does know he’s being ridiculous, and can’t seem to help it, and the accusation breaks him. As many times as tears have burned behind his eyes in the last few weeks, he’s never outright let them fall. This time, he isn’t able to hold them back.  
  
Steve swears harshly. He tosses his book to the floor and crosses the small space to join Bucky on his side of the carriage. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …”  
  
“No, you’re right.” Bucky sniffles pathetically and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I do know how I’m acting. I hate it. It’s only … you do know I meant it, when I said I’d never left the castle grounds before? This is the very first time.”  
  
Steve nods. “I believed you.”  
  
“I was never _allowed_ to leave, even if I had wanted to. And Becca wasn’t allowed either, so there were so many times when all we’d have was each other. She’s the only person I’ve ever been able to count on, and she’s been there every day since I was a baby and now she’s gone, and it’s forever, and we’ll see each other now and then but it won’t be the same and I hate it. I know that’s not fair. I know – ”  
  
“Stop it,” Steve interrupts, moving a bit closer. He smells like soap and musk and sweet Summer rain. “It’s alright. You’re allowed to feel how you feel, I’m sorry I said it was ridiculous.”  
  
“It is, you were right,” Bucky sniffs.  
  
“I didn’t have siblings,” Steve says gently. “Everything you just described … I don’t know what that’s like. I was always alone, except for Sam. And as much as I adore him, it’s not quite the same. If I’d had a sister or a brother, I imagine I would feel exactly as you do.”  
  
Bucky doesn’t know what else to say so he just shrugs miserably, and Steve moves in closer and puts his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky’s stomach churns again, but suddenly it feels different. For just a moment, it’s as if time stands still. He looks up at Steve, to find Steve staring back at him, concerned, maybe confused. Freckles on his nose, eyes as blue as the ocean. Bucky doesn’t know what comes over him. If he’s gone insane in his grief, or if someone slipped something into his juice at breakfast before they left, or if his world has been turned so much on its head since Steve arrived all those months ago that Bucky has simply lost the ability to think properly. Whatever the reason, or maybe for a hundred reasons or for none at all, Bucky leans over and rests his head against Steve’s broad shoulder.  
  
Steve is still for only a second, just a breath but long enough for Bucky to panic that he’s ruined everything. Then Steve melts into it, and his other arm wraps around Bucky too.  
  
* * *


	11. Lilac (New Love)

Their cavalcade returns late on a Wednesday evening, so it’s too dark outside the carriage windows for Bucky to make out the rolling hills and still-bare forests that would be familiar to him if he were able to see. All that signals it to his senses is the lights from the castle in the distance, growing ever closer as the horses continue their relentless march. Steve’s face glows in candlelight, hair falling softly across his forehead as he reads, sitting close to their only lamp for the light and casting shadows around the rest of the space. Bucky stares out the window at the sparkle of his home on the hill, muscles tightening as he resists the urge to ask Steve what he’s reading, to ask him anything at all, just so his attention is turned back to Bucky instead of the pages of a book.  
  
They’re down two bodies, when their procession finally comes to a halt in front of the castle and servants leap into action, unloading cases and helping Winifred down the steps of her carriage. Bucky wonders if the castle staff will miss Becca’s maid as much as he’ll miss Becca. If there were tearful goodbyes, if she had family in the village to leave behind, if she’ll write on occasion to let them know how she’s doing in her new home in France. He wonders how soon would be too soon to ask his father if he could visit her. He wonders if he’ll ever be allowed to, or if all that talk was simply placations.  
  
Steve is across the lawn speaking with Sam. They’re smiling. Sam does have an incredibly infectious smile. Bucky wonders if it’s too late to go see Thor. He’ll be awake, since a dozen horses are about to be returned to his charge and will need to be cared for after such a long journey. He’ll likely not sleep tonight.  
  
As Sam makes his way into the castle, Steve’s gaze shifts, crosses the lawn like he’s searching, and then settles on Bucky. His smile is small, maybe a little shy, and it ignites a spark in Bucky’s chest. He looks away from it.  
  
Back in his rooms, he finds a steaming teapot and a plate of sandwiches laid out on a tray next to his bed. A single daisy lies next to the plate, with a small roll of parchment wrapped around its stem. Bucky picks it up and unrolls it, and _Welcome home!_ is scrawled in Natasha’s tidy handwriting. He must have just missed her, and wishes he hadn’t. A friendly, familiar face would have been more welcoming than an empty room. The ceiling above him and stone walls around him have never felt so cavernous. Every picture and carpet and cushion and piece of furniture seems to gaze forlornly back at him as if they, too, can feel the loss. As if they know nothing from this moment forward will ever be as it was.  
  
Sam told him, weeks ago, that Steve has been happy here. Happier than Sam had ever seen him. Bucky wonders if that’s still true. Hours after, Steve had revealed to Bucky his darkest secret, and Bucky had held him and panicked, terrified that no matter what he said in response it would be the wrong thing.  
  
He pours tea into the cup next to it, lifting it by the saucer and carrying it over to the chair by the fire. He sits only for a second, before a burst of courage explodes in his gut and he leaps up, hurrying to the door. He stares, the feeling disappearing as quickly as it had come, at his fingers on the doorknob. He can’t. This is lunacy. It can’t even be an option, not so much as a whisper of desire in the deepest recesses of his mind. He retreats, back to the chair. The dancing flames in the fireplace taunt him. _Coward_ , he can hear hissed in their fizz and crackle. He is a coward. He didn’t need this to demonstrate that for him, he’s always been one. Peggy has always been astute and clear-headed and capable. Becca was always spirited and brave and forward-thinking. Bucky’s just a nuisance.  
  
He rubs his hands over his face. Pushes his hair back off his forehead, exhales in a strangled, frustrated moan. He stands again. His insides twist, like there’s a snake beneath his skin, tying itself in knots around his organs and squeezing the life out of them. His feet are moving again, before it feels like his brain asked them to. He’s heading for the door and this time he doesn’t stop.  
  
The hallway feels endless, and his heart is thunderous in his chest. He knocks with a violently shaking hand on Steve’s door, breath coming in aborted spurts, knees buckling and threatening to send him tumbling to the floor. Bucky turns back. Three steps away, four, five, and then the creak of the door opening makes him jump nearly out of his skin.  
  
“Bucky?” Steve’s voice asks.  
  
Bucky inhales. He looks over his shoulder, at Steve’s frowning face. He’s in his nightclothes, white and linen and soft-looking. Steve is the picture of princely perfection when he’s done up in a crown and finery and ceremonial sword; his broad shoulders and handsome face and deep voice convey more stateliness than Bucky would be capable of on his best day. Right now, he looks smaller and much more vulnerable. Bucky’s heart aches.  
  
“Are you alright?” Steve asks. The concern is real. He cares whether Bucky is unhappy.  
  
“Could I come in?” Bucky croaks.  
  
Steve nods quickly and steps back, opening his door wider. In the midst of his panic, Bucky manages to be proud of himself for walking forward and not tripping over his own feet as he does so.  
  
The blankets on Steve’s bed are pulled back, messy and rumpled. He’d been in bed already, when Bucky knocked. Maybe already asleep. Maybe that’s why it took him a minute to answer the door.  
  
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Bucky says quietly.  
  
“You’re not disturbing me.” Steve’s heat slides in closer to Bucky’s back. A hand finds Bucky’s shoulder, and every nerve-ending in Bucky’s body narrows down to the point of contact. “What’s wrong, Bucky?”  
  
Bucky turns to him. His eyes find Steve’s lips. Pink and plump, shining in the low light like he’s just licked them. Suddenly, it’s all very simple. He angles his own face up and leans forward, slowly pressing his own lips into Steve’s mouth.  
  
Steve is still just for a moment. Then his lips part on a small, contented hum. It vibrates between them as his arms move, taking Bucky’s face into the warm cradle of his hands. Bucky’s head spins and his heart races and he can’t think of anything but how soft Steve’s lips are, how warm it feels to be pressed against him, how it makes his skin prickle and blood rush through his veins and leaves him feeling foggy and muddled but at the same time more alive than he’s felt in his entire life. Steve’s fingers move on his face, and Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s waist to steady himself.  
  
“Buck,” Steve sighs into his lips. It’s a sweeter sound than the loveliest music.  
  
Bucky kisses him again instead of responding. The slide of their lips is delicious, slow and maddening, softer than velvet.  
  
“Is this alright?” Steve asks anxiously, when their mouths fall apart and he rests his forehead against Bucky’s, even though Bucky is the one who initiated it.  
  
The air feels thick and weighted around them, like being trapped in a windowless room in the middle of a muggy Summer day. Bucky should say no, not because he doesn’t want to keep kissing Steve but because he _shouldn’t_ want to keep kissing Steve, but what comes out of his mouth instead is a breathy, “yes.”  
  
The next kiss feels far more important, like once they acknowledged its existence it ceased to be something they could pretend never transpired. It’s part of Bucky's history, now. No matter where this leads, no matter where the rest of life takes either of them, Bucky’s life story is stamped with this day, in April, when he kissed Steve in the St. Michael suite with the scent of lilac blooms wafting in on the breeze through the open windows.  
  
The thought thrills him, and then nearly immediately, terrifies him. “But it isn’t, is it?” manages to tumble clumsily out of his mouth, muted against Steve’s lips.  
  
Steve pulls back. “Isn’t what?”  
  
“It isn’t alright.” Fear begins to set in as Bucky realizes what they’ve just done, and that they can never undo it.  
  
Steve’s thumb moves slowly along Bucky’s cheek. His lips are pinker than before, flushed from Bucky kissing them. His hands slide down Bucky’s arms to his hands, taking them and bringing one up to his mouth to place a delicate kiss on Bucky’s knuckles. Then he leads Bucky to the orange loveseat by his fireplace. They sit, and Steve keeps holding Bucky’s hand.  
  
“We’ll be excommunicated,” Bucky says, drawing in a shaking breath. “Shunned. Maybe locked away like that boy you told me about, the one they caught you with.”  
  
“I won’t tell anyone,” Steve whispers. His fingertips slide as light as feathers over Bucky’s. “If you … you can just go back to your chambers. Pretend this never happened.”  
  
Bucky shakes his head, desperate for Steve to know how wrong he is about why Bucky’s worried, but unable to communicate it successfully. “That’s not … I don’t …”  
  
Steve’s throat clicks as he swallows, and Bucky blinks quickly against the burn behind his eyes.  
  
“When I look at you, I … I feel … warm.”  
  
“Me too,” Steve says, with a nod and a tiny, hopeful smile. His eyes are so kind. There are so many emotions swimming in them, some of which Bucky recognizes and others he’s afraid to.  
  
“How can you always be so calm about these things?”  
  
“I don’t mind so much what people think.” Steve shrugs one shoulder, and his hand travels up into Bucky’s hair. Instinctively, Bucky turns his cheek into Steve’s touch; his lips brushing Steve’s wrist accidentally but he doesn’t move them away. Steve continues, “I have never once been what anyone wanted of me. I am not the son my father wants. I am not the heir the court wants. I am not the ruler my people deserve. After a lifetime, you grow accustomed to being disappointing.”  
  
The words are so tragic, and Steve says them so casually, and it makes something throb in Bucky’s chest. “You aren’t disappointing to me,” he says. His hands feel lost and uncomfortable with nothing to hold on to, so he places them on Steve’s chest, over his heart.  
  
Steve slides his other hand over Bucky’s, curling his fingers around the backs of Bucky’s palm.  
  
“What if I disappoint you?” Bucky worries. “What if this isn’t real, what if I’ve just lost my mind because Becca is gone and I want to punish my parents for taking her away from me and tomorrow everything will go back to the way it was?”  
  
Steve looks at him through slightly squinted eyes, soft with fondness as they always are when he looks at Bucky. “It’s okay if you don’t want this.”  
  
The potential consequences Bucky weighs in his head are so enormous. Bucky has rarely ever taken even small risks in his years on this earth, and this one is overwhelmingly large. When he looks at Steve, at his blue eyes and pink cheeks and lips turned red, other things seem to disappear. The only thing that matters to Bucky, in this moment, is the thought of Steve believing even for a second that Bucky doesn’t want to kiss him again.  
  
* * *  
  
Sun filters in through the high glass ceiling, creating spots in Bucky’s vision he has to blink away. The warm, moist air in the glasshouse always calms him, soothes him like being wrapped in a blanket on a cold day, surrounded by the smell of earth and flowers and the revitalizing glow of life that crawls up the walls and blooms bright and colorful all around him. In the dead of Winter, this place feels like the only living thing in the entire castle. In the Spring and Summer, it feels exotic, like the promise of faraway places Bucky can only dream of. Each plant here came from somewhere else, from a distant land some lucky person has travelled to, returning filled with stories Bucky wishes he could hear. The plants are categorized, in a leger near the entrance, that Bucky has read through countless times. He memorizes all the foreign names of all the places in Africa and the Orient and even across the sea in the New World, keeps them in his head in a list, visits them in his dreams because he’ll never see them in person. Not in this life, anyway.  
  
He reaches out to touch soft petals, velvety between his fingertips. The flowers are star-shaped, it turns out. And red. He hadn’t known what their coloring would be, and now they’re opened and they’re dark, blood red around the edges, fading gently to white, and then finally pale green in the very center. They remind him a little of the rosemallow brought back from the Indian subcontinent. Equally as showy but with sharper points.  
  
They’re stunning. Bucky thought they would be, and he waited all Winter to know for sure, and here they are. He waited all Winter for the rough bulbs to warm in the earth, for pale green stalks to grow tall and steady, for the flowers to split their casing and open and spill the fragile secrets they bring from a barren desert halfway across the world. It ends up a long time that he simply stares at them, as gardeners move around him and leave him be. They know not to bother him, here. For the first time in his entire life, Bucky wishes they would bother him. He wishes someone would come up to him, initiate a conversation about the new Spring blooms. They’ve all been waiting the Winter for this, too. And he doesn’t care about people’s stations in life, anymore. It had been hammered into him for two decades to care, and then a visitor from a neighboring land had hammered it back out in just a few months.  
  
As if on cue, perfectly signaled by an invisible conductor, Steve’s voice rings out from behind him. “Thought I’d find you here. You weren’t at breakfast.”  
  
Bucky exhales noisily through his nose. He doesn’t turn to face him. “The amaryllis bloomed.”  
  
Steve moves in beside him and takes in the flowers. He touches them, too, like Bucky did; gentle fingertips exploring smooth petals. The nail on his thumb is so nicely shaped and clean and pleasing.  
  
“Beautiful,” he says softly.  
  
“Did you think it would be red?”  
  
“I didn’t have a guess. You?”  
  
Bucky shakes his head.  
  
Steve is looking at him; at the side of his head because Bucky is still staring at the flowers. Bucky had left his rooms, the night before, after only a few more tender kisses; afraid of what he might do if he stayed too long.   
  
“Could we go for a walk?”  
  
“Okay.” Bucky touches a flower one more time, as if he’s saying goodbye, for today. He’ll be back tomorrow.  
  
A warm breeze meets them, rustling through the tiny budding leaves on the trees. They walk in silence until they’re far enough away from the castle that they won’t be spotted through the windows, up a path that leads to a stone monument in a circle of towering lilac bushes. It’s the Archangel Raphael, the Saint who purifies romantic unions and drives out demons who would seek to destroy uncorrupted love, and his cold stone eyes look down like he’s mocking them. It doesn’t escape Bucky either, that he and Steve were both named for Saints.  
  
“Are you alright?” Steve asks, once they’re truly alone, and Bucky doesn’t have to ask to know what he means.  
  
In truth, he isn’t sure. He wants to be. He wants to be confident in everything, the way Steve is, but so many things are unknown and unclear and Bucky has never been good with uncertainty. He’s never had much of it. Nearly every minute of his life has been planned and scheduled, and he’s never been given much say in what he does or where he goes or who he sees. The idea of beginning something with Steve behind his parents’ back is terrifying. The idea of what would happen if they were found out is terrifying. It all sits heavy as a stone in Bucky’s mind, mixed up with the memory of how nice it had felt when Steve was kissing him.  
  
“What would this … be?” he asks, carefully. “If it was something.”  
  
“Whatever you’d like. Or nothing at all. I’m not asking you for anything.”  
  
Bucky nods, and considers. “What does it feel like? To know you don’t think about girls the way you should?”  
  
Steve’s smile is sympathetic. “I think maybe you already know how it feels.”  
  
“I wouldn’t want to be married off to a boy with no say in the matter either. It’s the lack of choice I hate more than anything,” Bucky argues, but he’s arguing with his own mind more than with Steve.  
  
“I know that. And I believe you. I just don’t think it’s the only reason you’re so resistant to the idea of being married.”  
  
“You think I’m … like you.”  
  
“I don’t know.” Steve sighs. “I can’t answer that for you. I’m sorry, I … if I’d known this would cause you so much turmoil I never would have kissed you.”  
  
“Except you didn’t,” Bucky reminds him, and himself, because the distinction is important. “I kissed you.”  
  
Steve blinks, studying Bucky’s face, and nods. “You did.”  
  
“You won’t be staying here forever,” Bucky says, and then he feels badly, because the look on Steve’s face tells him he isn’t succeeding at all in communicating what he’s feeling. Truthfully, he doesn’t know what he’s feeling himself, but he’s making Steve feel as if he’s at fault, and he isn’t. “ _I’m_ sorry. I’m going about this all wrong. I don’t regret what we did. I just don’t know where we go from here.”  
  
“I can’t see the future.” Steve steps a little closer, and Bucky’s breath hitches in his chest.   
  
“What happens when you have to leave? When we’re both assigned brides that we don’t want, and we live our miserable lives, never seeing each other again? Not to mention you were sent here _because_ of something like this. What will your father do if he finds out you’re at it again with someone else? What will _my_ father do?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Steve repeats.  
  
“He’ll think you corrupted me. Or worse, that you attacked me, and I was too feeble to fight you off. You’ll be in the kind of trouble we can’t even imagine.”  
  
Steve’s eyes squint, sadness written all over his face as he tries to read Bucky’s. “Did I? Did I corrupt you?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Bucky breathes, heartbroken at the idea that Steve thinks he might have. “Not at all, I’m only saying … that’s what he’ll think. He’ll be wrong, but he’s often wrong and he never listens.”  
  
“I don’t know any more than you. I know this is a risk, and I know it’s probably a terrible idea.”  
  
“You still want it?” Bucky asks, his voice coming out in a rasp. “Even knowing all that?”  
  
“I just know I’m happy when I’m around you, and I’ve felt comfortable telling you things I never say out loud to anyone. And I liked kissing you. If you don’t feel the same way, that’s alright. We can be friends, like we are now.”  
  
Bucky almost wishes he could say he doesn’t feel the same, because it would be far, far easier. It would also be a lie, and Steve deserves the truth. Maybe Bucky deserves it, too. Maybe after a lifetime of being a side character in his own story, he deserves to have something he wants. He takes the plunge, moves in a few steps closer and kisses Steve again. Steve’s hands grip his hips and then slide around his back, pulling him in close so they’re pressed together all the way to their ankles, and his tongue comes out to taste, and in an instant, all Bucky’s doubt falls away.  
  
* * *


	12. Chrysanthemum (The Sun)

It’s lucky the sun is higher in the sky and has warmed the ground and the air around the castle, because Bucky suddenly wants to do almost nothing but kiss Steve, and they don’t dare do it inside. They frequent secrets spots in the garden, and in the forest beyond, some days riding an hour on horseback just to spend the afternoon lounging by the river, kissing until their lips are numb. Sweet, chaste kisses quickly turn into deeper explorations of each other’s mouths, and hands on each other’s bodies, intimate and searching and bringing Bucky closer than he’s ever been to another person in the space of just a few days. He’s never known what it’s like to be held the way Steve holds him, close and tender and as if he needs Bucky’s warmth against his to keep his heart beating. He never could have predicted the warm, safe way it makes him feel, the way his body melds to Steve’s as if they’re ceasing to be two separate entities. As if their spirits have been waiting all these years for each other.  
  
Steve is patient with him, letting Bucky set the pace, letting Bucky take as long as he needs to become used to it all. Bucky quickly discovers it’s all even better when lying down. It sparks desires in him, hot and twisting and deep in his gut that make him yearn for all sorts of things he always explicitly understood he shouldn’t want until he was married. Things that Steve has done before, and Bucky finds himself both insecure at his lack of knowledge and jealous that someone else had Steve that way first. He keeps the second thought to himself, because he knows it isn’t a fair thing to think. The first one, though, he does voice out loud sometimes, and Steve always laughs and tells him he’s perfect, and rolls him over in the grass to kiss him harder.  
  
A rushing brook is their soundtrack, as their horses graze in the pasture behind them. Steve’s hair is soft, and his lips are softer, and Bucky feels intoxicated by him. By the feeling of his body pressing Bucky’s into the ground, by the heady weight in the air around them, by the things Steve does with sweeps and swirls of his tongue that leave Bucky breathless. Blood rushes in his veins, and it rushes elsewhere too, and he knows Steve can feel that because he can feel Steve, warm through his clothes and stiff, pressing into Bucky’s hip. It’s a thrill; an exciting, dangerous adventure that they shouldn’t be on but they are nonetheless, and Bucky feels safe on it with Steve here with him.  
  
“Everything about you makes me feel crazy,” Steve tells him, with his voice breathless and his cheeks flushed, and sometimes he says things that make it so hard for Bucky to breathe. He says what he’s thinking in a way that Bucky has never been able to. He isn’t embarrassed to feel things and admit them.  
  
Steve’s lips are so nice against his neck, sucking and licking and certainly leaving marks Bucky will have to hide with a high collar to avoid questions to which he doesn’t have decent answers. He’s never felt before the things Steve can make him feel so easily, and he’s properly addicted to it faster than is likely advisable. With Steve in his space, in his nose and his skin and burrowed down underneath to a place where Bucky couldn’t so easily scrub him out, Bucky finds he doesn’t care. He finds himself delighted to get lost in it, to while away the days just like this.  
  
“You too,” he manages to return, and he can’t help the desperate sound that slips from his lips when Steve kisses his neck again and rolls his hips down, sending sparks that feel like fire through Bucky’s body. It isn’t the first time it’s been this heated, but it feels different, in a way that makes Bucky equal parts want to dive head-first into it, and run away.  
  
“Could I touch you?” Steve whispers, and Bucky shivers noticeably.  
  
His heart races. “You are touching me.”  
  
“I meant …”  
  
He already knew what Steve meant, it’s just a boundary they’ve not crossed yet.  
  
Steve lifts his head up and moves off from on top of Bucky so he can look at him, head propped up on his hand and his lips bright red and shiny. Bucky can’t help it – he reaches out and slides the pad of his thumb over Steve’s plump bottom lip, and Steve kisses it.   
  
“I know what you meant,” Bucky says quietly, heart still racing like thunder in his chest.  
  
“Please say no.”  
  
Bucky frowns, suddenly confused. “You _don’t_ want – ?”  
  
“No, I do. I …” Steve’s eyes darken. “I do.”  
  
“Oh.” Bucky shivers again, tremors coursing through him at the look on Steve’s face. Hungry, desiring. Bucky has never been desired before.  
  
Then it cools somewhat, and Steve’s forehead wrinkles and sincerity shines in his aqua eyes instead. “But if you don’t … never let me do anything because you think I’ll be angry if you say no. If you don’t want it, please tell me.”  
  
Bucky chews at his own lower lip, nerves and longing both surging in his chest. “I’ve never …”  
  
“I know.” Steve smiles, sweet and understanding, and moves his fingers over Bucky’s cheek. “I know, of course you haven’t. That doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Have you done … everything?” Bucky tries to keep from sounding accusing but isn’t sure he manages it. He can’t say he’s even sure what _everything_ is. What a man does with his wife is barely discussed in polite circles, Bucky has never once considered what he might do with another man.  
  
“Most things.” Steve’s smile turns sour, like maybe he wishes he hadn’t. “If you want me to, I’ll tell you. But it doesn’t need to matter, if you don’t … mind.”  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “I just don’t want to be less than you’re expecting.”  
  
“Stop that.” Steve leans in and kisses him, slow and all-consuming. “You’re already more than that. You’re more important to me than anyone ever has been.”  
  
Bucky wants it, he wants all of it. His thoughts drift just for a moment to the fact that Steve means that much to him too, which can only end in tragedy since it can’t be forever, but he pushes that away. Steve lives in the moment without regard for the future and Bucky wants that for himself. He wants to just enjoy his life and forget about what might come later. He nods shyly, trying to indicate his consent for whatever Steve wants to do, and Steve kisses him like he’ll die if he stops. Generous sweeps of his tongue that steal Bucky’s breath from his lungs and leave him dizzy even with his head safely cradled in the soft grass beneath it.  
  
He pulls at Bucky’s clothing and Bucky tries to reciprocate, to get at Steve’s bare skin so he can put his hands on it, feel all that warmth and softness beneath his fingers. Steve’s fingers dig into his pants and curl around him, and no one has ever touched him there and Bucky isn’t prepared for the way it feels. Heat and smooth skin and the delicious slide, leaving him leaking over Steve’s fist and whimpering. He tries to reciprocate that too, his mind racing and vision blurring out around the edges as he puts his hand on Steve, mimicking his movements and earning a moan from Steve that sends a dark chill down Bucky’s spine. He wants instantly to spend the rest of his life pulling every possible noise from Steve’s mouth, to use his hands and his lips and his tongue to take Steve apart and piece him lovingly back together. It’s more addictive than ever, touching him like this and being touched, and Bucky’s head pounds.  
  
“Is this okay?” Steve asks.  
  
“It feels good,” Bucky forces himself to answer even as an embarrassed flush spreads down his neck. Saying these things out loud takes more courage than doing them, he’s realizing.  
  
“Like that,” Steve murmurs in encouragement, as Bucky moves his wrist so his fingers twist around Steve’s erection. It’s so warm and soft under his palm. “So beautiful like this, Bucky. You can … if you’re close, don’t hold back, alright?”  
  
Bucky nods, and hears himself moaning embarrassingly loud but it seems to spur Steve on and his hand speeds up, squeezing perfectly and Bucky tips over the edge, pleasure blooming bright and intense. He feels it when Steve does too, feels the pulsing in his hand and the wetness that follows and he likes that too, likes knowing it was _him_ that made Steve feel good. God help him, he likes it.  
  
Steve wipes his hand on the grass and then drags Bucky’s heavy, sated body over, so he ends up with his head pillowed on Steve’s chest, floating in the aftermath. It’s never felt quite like this, when Bucky has touched himself, and it doesn’t leave him feeling ashamed and weak like that always does. Even though they shouldn’t be doing it with each other any more than on their own, at least according to everyone else, Bucky can’t regret this. It feels too much like this is where he fits, in Steve’s arms.   
  
“Fun?” Steve asks after a few minutes, trying to make it light-hearted, but Bucky can tell he feels it too – the weighted consequence of the moment.  
  
“Yes,” he answers, blushing and turning his face into Steve’s neck. “Can we do it again tomorrow?”  
  
Steve chuckles, low and heartfelt, and promises, “this and so many other things I can’t wait to show you.”  
  
“Am I really more important to you than anyone?” Bucky asks. He dislikes how apprehensive he sounds, but he’s very accustomed to being low on everyone’s list of priorities. It makes his soul sing to know he’s significant to someone in a _most_ sort of way.  
  
“You don’t know how much I care about you, I suppose because I haven’t told you yet.” Steve kisses his hair. “I was worried about scaring you off. Being here with you … you just accepted me, for everything I am. You still wanted to be around me after you found out my darkest secrets, and now you’re here with me like this when it’s what I’ve wanted for months …”  
  
Bucky looks up in surprise. “Months? Were you never going to tell me?”  
  
“How could I?” The smile on Steve’s face is small and sad. “If you didn’t feel the same way, I’d be risking everything.”  
  
Bucky nods. He understands, and regrets, that it took them so long to find their way here. There is such an overwhelming sense of belonging, being with Steve like this, and they wasted so much time. “I don’t know if I did all along. But I do now.”  
  
Steve’s smile brightens, and he kisses Bucky again, with apple blossoms colouring the sky overhead. “Run away with me?” he requests softly.  
  
Bucky exhales, eyes closing and nose tucking warmly under Steve’s chin. “Think of that. If only we could.”  
  
Steve doesn’t answer. His fingers slide as light as a feather over Bucky’s forearm, tickling his skin as birds whistle melodically around them.  
  
* * *  
  
“I haven’t seen so much of you lately,” Thor says. He drops the pitchfork in his hand into the ground so it sticks upright, and wipes at his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. As usual, there is straw in his long hair and dirt on his face.  
  
Bucky grimaces in guilt. Sweat beads along his own hairline, the exertion from the ride from which they’ve just returned leaving him flushed and Thor’s words bring yet more heat to his face. “I’m sorry. I’ve been … busy.”  
  
It’s such a feeble excuse, but he can’t very well explain what has really been occupying his time these days.  
  
Thor shakes his head and smiles casually. “You don’t owe me an explanation, Sire. I miss your company. But of course you have more important things to be getting up to.”  
  
“Please don’t call me that,” Bucky begs, wrinkling up his nose.  
  
Thor’s smile widens. “It’s habit.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Where are Steven and Samuel this afternoon?”  
  
Steve, Bucky knows, is stuck inside with the King, being subjected to his weekly lesson on the contours of ruling a kingdom. Steve hates them, although he’s never said so, too kind to insult Bucky’s father out loud. Bucky can tell, regardless, as Steve always emerges from the sessions in a foul mood. He isn’t sure about Sam. It’s been a few days since Bucky has seen him. He relays the information to Thor, who nods.  
  
“Are you happy the weather is warming?”  
  
Momentarily, Bucky’s mind drifts back to the other day, to being touched by Steve surrounded by Spring blossoms. “I am. You?”  
  
“The Winter doesn’t seem so long anymore, now that I have a real home,” Thor tells him, sending a flutter into Bucky’s stomach. “But it’s nicer to muck out the stalls in the fairer months. At least until it gets too hot and it starts to stink.”  
  
Bucky chuckles. “It’s certainly an acquired aroma.”  
  
“If you say so.” Thor laughs as well.  
  
“Let me help.” Bucky lifts a shovel from a hook on the wall.  
  
“There’s no need.”  
  
“I’d like to.”  
  
“What would the King say, if I allowed the young prince to shovel manure? It’s bad enough you insist on brushing your own horse.”  
  
Bucky shrugs. “So, don’t tell him.” He doesn’t care so much these days, what his father thinks about anything. He’s sweating by the time they finish, and nearly as dirty as Thor, and is struck with an odd sense of satisfaction. He never does anything that feels valuable. He reads and he plays chess with Steve and he dresses for dinner. In a way he wasn’t expecting, it’s fulfilling to contribute.  
  
Steve and Sam, with perfectly imperfect timing, turn up just as Bucky is hanging the shovel back onto the wall. Sam bursts into whooping laughter the moment he sets eyes on Bucky, covering his mouth and trying desperately to hold it in.  
  
“I could have you beheaded, you know,” Bucky reminds him dryly.  
  
“It would be worth it,” Sam chuckles.  
  
Bucky meets Steve’s eyes, and he’s grinning as well, although looks somewhat more impressed than his giggling valet.  
  
“I helped,” Bucky says, exaggerating how pleased he is with himself for further comedic affect.  
  
“I can see that.” Steve presses his lips together and then shoves Sam’s shoulder. “Be nice, he helped!”  
  
“Yes, Your Highness,” Sam responds, still laughing but attempting to compose himself.  
  
“I would shake your hand in congratulations, but I’m not touching you until you bathe,” Steve tells him, and Bucky makes a face at him. Steve’s eyes flash, the two of them sharing a secret conversation with their eyes, as their friends are none the wiser.  
  
* * *  
  
“James.”  
  
Bucky stops in his tracks, frowning. He takes a few steps backwards, to the doorway he’d just passed. It’s the King’s study, on the first floor of the castle. It’s cloaked in mahogany and heavy drapery, with shelves of legers lining the walls and tall chairs facing the fireplace.  
  
“Sir?” he asks the half-open door, rolling up anxiously onto the balls of his toes. He’s rarely called into his father’s study. It often means nothing good.  
  
“Come in for a moment,” his father’s voice answers.  
  
Bucky chews at the soft inside of his cheek as the pushes the door open the rest of the way. He finds the King next to the fire, one leg crossed over the other, a smoking pipe in his hand. The setting sun outside bathes the room in orange light that is lovely and foreboding all at once.  
  
“There is to be a ball, in the coming weeks. Perhaps near the beginning of next month,” the King intones, staring disinterestedly into the flames before him.  
  
Bucky nods. “Yes, Sir. How can I be of assistance?”  
  
“It is for you.” Finally, he does look up, meeting Bucky’s confused gaze.  
  
“What’s for me?”  
  
“It’s time you were settled. The daughters of our friends and allies will travel to us, and you will socialize with them and choose one to be your bride.”  
  
It feels like within an instant, his body’s entire supply of blood drains from his face and limbs and pours out onto the floor underneath his feet. None of the words bouncing around his skull can find their way out of his mouth. As much as he’s known this would happen one day – he’s always known he would be married off at the whim of his father – he can’t help but worry the timing is too suspect; that the King knows, somehow, what Bucky has been up to with their temporary ward and is rushing forward to nip it in the bud. The thought sends terror through him.  
  
His father raises an eyebrow at him. “This will be a time of celebration, James.”  
  
“Yes, Sir,” Bucky forces out.  
  
“You remember when we did the same for Margaret and Rebecca.”  
  
“I do.” Bucky hadn’t enjoyed those evenings either. He’d sulked in corners, watching his beautiful sisters float through a crowd of suitors, picking out the person who would take them away from him. He can’t fathom the kind of person who would attend such an event. Choosing someone to spend the rest of his life with should feel more important than choosing a ripe apple from a tree, he figures. It would seem he’s wrong.  
  
The King takes a slow puff on his pipe, and Bucky is no longer worthy of eye-contact. Instead, he looks back to the fire. “A ballroom filled with eligible maidens, all there to be introduced to you, should be welcome news. See that you adjust your attitude before they arrive.”  
  
The distain that drips from his voice feels like hot candle wax dripping onto Bucky’s skin. He says, “yes, Sir,” one last time, and understands he’s being dismissed as the King stands and moves to his desk.  
  
Bucky stumbles as he makes his exist, tripping over his own feet in his haste to keep from running from the room.  
  
* * *


	13. Camellia (Destiny)

Steve’s rooms are nicer than his own, Bucky decides. Or perhaps he’s just not as used to them. Or perhaps it has more to do with their current occupant than it does with the furniture and draperies. The windows do seem to let in more light than Bucky’s, and more gentle breezes that smell like Spring blossoms when they’re open, as they are now, but Bucky isn’t sure he ever would have cared for the St. Michael suite if someone other than Steve were staying in it. Many have before.  
  
Steve is next to him, on the sofa. His shirt is yellow, high-collared, with shiny silver buttons. His lips are soft and his fingers insistent as they hold Bucky’s cheeks, solid enough that he would have to pull in order to move away. It makes him feel intensely desired and it’s a heady rush that he remains unused to. They haven’t much dared to be together like this indoors, safer to explore each other in faraway fields and glens where they’re unlikely to be disturbed and could hear horses coming a long way off if someone was headed their way. They’ve spent many an afternoon doing just that, and oh, Bucky has been saved by it. Steve is resplendent, his lips and hands are Bucky’s salvation in a world that has seemed Hell-bent on thumbing him down into the dirt. Steve elevates him, makes him feel treasured and important.  
  
This afternoon, the rest of Bucky’s family is attending the grand opening of a new wing on the cottage hospital in the village. His mother has been working with the committee for months, it’s been her pride and joy, and the King did not think to ask Bucky or Steve to accompany them. Only Peggy and Daniel. Bucky hadn’t bothered arguing. He’d half-expected Winifred to speak up on the matter, but she didn’t, so Bucky and Steve were left alone.  
  
He wishes he were more hurt by it than he is. It’s sad, in a way, to think how far he’s fallen from caring what his father thinks of him. He still cares more than he’d like to but it’s peanuts compared to a few short months ago. And it meant they were safe, at least for a few hours, to lock themselves in Steve’s room and kiss until Bucky’s lips have gone numb.  
  
“Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?” Steve asks softly, letting his mouth fall away.  
  
Bucky frowns. He moves his head back an inch so he can focus on Steve’s face and blinks at him in confusion. Steve is so devastatingly beautiful, even with his face twisted in uncertainty.  
  
“You don’t seem to be enjoying this as you usually do.” Steve’s thumb slides slowly along Bucky’s damp lower lip. Bucky wants to suck it into his mouth, but doesn’t.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I hadn’t realized I was … doing whatever it is I was doing.”  
  
“You weren’t doing anything,” Steve assures. He presses another soft kiss to the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “You just seem distracted. I thought maybe something was bothering you. Something more than not being invited to the ceremony.”  
  
“I don’t really mind about that,” Bucky says honestly.  
  
“I didn’t think so. That’s why I asked.” Steve squints at him. He sees too much. He always has. He’s always seen right down to Bucky’s core, nearly from the moment he arrived. Back then, Bucky had despised it. Lately, it makes him feel known.  
  
“My father is hosting a ball.” He exhales slowly and lets his hands slip down Steve’s front, fingers playing in the buttons on his shirt. They reflect the light coming in from the open windows.  
  
“And?”  
  
“Not a regular ball. One for me. He’s inviting all the eligible maidens in the neighboring kingdoms, to …”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Oh?” Bucky looks back up at him and finds Steve’s handsome face suddenly covered in clouds.  
  
“So that you can select a princess, yes?” he asks, and Bucky nods his affirmative. “I’ve been to that ball. More than once, actually.”  
  
Bucky reaches out, threading his fingers through Steve’s hair, brushing the golden strands off his frowning forehead. “But you didn’t. Select a princess.”  
  
Steve shakes his head. His face angles, leaning against Bucky’s hand, chin fitting sweetly against Bucky’s palm so he can cup it.  
  
“They didn’t force you?”  
  
“Not physically,” Steve answers, with a slow sigh. “They tried to … verbally, I suppose. But it didn’t take.”  
  
“Is there any way out of it? For me?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Steve licks his lips and looks at Bucky with the saddest, sorriest expression on his face. Like he truly wishes he could do something but probably can’t.  
  
Bucky swallows. He lets his hand fall away and then leans forward, allowing Steve to wrap him up.  
  
“You just grit your teeth and get through it,” Steve says, “and then tell the King you weren’t interested in anyone they brought for you.”  
  
Bucky can’t imagine his father would accept that, the way Steve’s father did. Bucky doesn’t have a long history of standing up for himself like Steve does. He’s not sure he’d be strong enough to hold his position. Except now, he has Steve. Things are different than they were, months ago, when he would have been unhappy about being married off and sent away but would have allowed it to happen anyway. Now, he wonders. He wonders if he’s stronger, now that he has something other than himself to fight for.  
  
“Or, you could run away with me.”  
  
The crook of Steve’s neck is such a warm, safe place, the perfect spot for Bucky to close his eyes and imagine a world where that was a real option. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”  
  
Steve doesn’t answer. His arms tighten, keeping Bucky close.  
  
* * *  
  
The castle is bustling for days leading up to the ball. Servants hurry about, with decorative arrangements and silver serving trays and so, so many flowers. By the time their ballroom is finished and ready to entertain Bucky assumes it will look a little like a travelling flower show, laden heavily with every rare species his father has ever collected. That is not, Bucky understands, about providing an aesthetically pleasing space for their guests to occupy. It is entirely a brag, a status symbol, about making others feel lesser. The King is very skilled in the art of it. Bucky never used to mind. He never used to _notice_. Now he’s so keenly aware of it, that it sets his teeth on edge.  
  
Their butler follows his father around eagerly for two days, taking notes on a sheet of parchment attached to a wooden block. Endless lists of things to do. Bucky realizes, as they rush past him in the hallway one day, that the guest-list was finalized weeks ago, and invitations were sent, and received, and confirmed, and Bucky never had a say in any of it, any more than he has a say in the flower arrangements. When that thought hits him, it makes him irrationally angry.  
  
He’s always been angry, he’s come to understand. He never expressed it. Never truly felt it. Maybe he assumed he wouldn’t have been allowed to, but it was always there. Angry at his life, at his upbringing, at his family, at the injustice of it all. Steve – gentle, brave, wonderful Steve – has taught him it’s alright to feel things he before would have shoved away as hard as he could. And there’s so much good, in that. There’s bad, too. As Bucky gnashes his teeth and clenches his fists and tries desperately to keep from picking up the chair he’s sitting in and hurling it through the window, he sees the downsides. He never knew, before Steve, that he was allowed to want for something better than the hand he’d been dealt.  
  
He manages to keep from throwing the chair; escaping, instead. He runs from the castle, hurrying along the stone path down to the stables to fetch his horse. Merlin is grazing lazily in the extensive pasture, with the King’s other horses – and Steve’s – engaging in the safe, carefree activity. Bucky clicks his tongue, attracts Merlin’s attention, and lures his horse over with the promise of a sugar-cube. He doesn’t really have one, and he feels unexpectedly terribly about lying to the animal.  
  
He coaxes Merlin impatiently into the stable, shutting the gate quickly behind him and roughly grabbing his saddle from off a hook on the wall.  
  
“Your Majesty?”  
  
Bucky turns around, as he’s fastening the buckle under Merlin’s belly, to find Thor frowning at him, with a shovel in his hand and a dramatic smear of mud on his cheek.  
  
“I’m taking Merlin out,” Bucky says shortly, turning back to his horse and making sure the strap is tight enough. On another day, he might have griped at Thor to call him by his name instead of the honorific, as he keeps having to do. Every time Thor promises he will, and he always seems to forget again by the next day.  
  
“Alright,” Thor’s voice answers. “Do you need any help?”  
  
“No,” Bucky returns, in a far louder, sharper tone that is likely necessary, given that Thor hasn’t really done anything wrong.  
  
He doesn’t look back, uninterested in surveying the damage he may have just caused. Instead he plants his foot in the stirrup, and heaves himself up and over, landing with practiced ease in the center of the leather saddle. He squeezes his heels into Merlin’s sides, urging him forward, and together they gallop out of the building and away. They race along the lawn, up the hill, the wind whipping past them, pulling cold tears from Bucky’s eyes. It’s entirely the wind, he tells himself. There aren’t tears streaming down his cheeks for any other reason.  
  
The ruins are the same as always, when he reaches them. The wind is even stronger, here, up on the peak of a cliff with the ocean below and the wet, salty breezes that rip off it. Where usually Bucky finds himself cleansed by the ocean air, today it feels violent, furious, dangerous. Bucky dismounts, and doesn’t bother to tie Merlin up, and merely collapses, onto the damp grass next to the crumbling stone structure. The whispers he can usually hear when he comes to this place, the ancient spirits mulling around, the remnants of Gods of the old religions, seem to have been silenced by the wickedness of the wind. The unexpected loneliness leaves him with such a crushing sense of despair.  
  
He’s alone for an hour, perhaps two, before the rhythmic pounding of hooves fade in behind him. Bucky doesn’t have to look up, from where his forehead is pressed into his knees, to guess the identity of the presence joining him. There’s only one other living soul, to his knowledge, that knows of this place’s existence.  
  
“I thought I’d find you here,” a voice says.  
  
Bucky doesn’t answer.  
  
Steve dismounts from his own horse and walks over. He stands, a short ways in the background, and hesitates.  
  
Somehow, that makes Bucky feel even worse, and he shudders, and squeezes his arms tighter around his tucked-up legs.  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
“He’s going to force me,” Bucky chokes out. “I’m not like you. I can’t do this. I can’t defy my father.”  
  
Footsteps approach further. Steve sinks to the ground next to him and an arm goes around Bucky’s shoulders. Strong, solid, protective. Bucky can’t resist it. He tips sideways, falling into the comfort Steve offers.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, quiet and sorrowful into Bucky’s hair, wild from the whipping air currents and wet from the sea breeze.  
  
“It’s not your fault.” Bucky’s throat clenches painfully as he tries to swallow.  
  
“You mean the world to me,” Steve says, his lips close enough to Bucky’s ear that he can whisper the secret and still be heard over the roar of the wind. “I know it isn’t my fault. I’m sorry you’re hurting.”  
  
“Won’t you, as well?” Bucky asks. For a brief moment, he considers he might be wrong, and it twinges in his chest. “You’ll have to be there, too. Watching, as I’m made to dance, and socialize, and choose one of them to spend my life with.”  
  
“Yes,” Steve replies. His hand rubs Bucky’s shoulder, a slow, even up-and-down. “Yes, I’ll hate it. I’ll want nothing more than to ask you to dance myself, and I won’t be able to, and it will be horrible.”  
  
Bucky lifts his head, looking Steve in the eyes. He knows his own face is streaked with tears, but he isn’t expecting to find Steve’s in a similar state. Steve takes Bucky’s cheek in his hand, and guides their lips together for a slow, heartfelt kiss. It tastes like salt from the sea breeze, and from their grief.  
  
“I wish I could protect you, from this,” he murmurs into Bucky’s mouth.  
  
Bucky shakes his head, leaving their foreheads resting together, as mist from below douses them both. “It’s not your fault,” he repeats. “And I don’t care, about being married off. At least, not in the way I used to. I care that it will take me away from you.”  
  
Steve’s thumb strokes gently along Bucky’s cheek. “You are the architect of your own existence,” he says softly.  
  
Bucky doesn’t answer. They’ve entertained that argument too many times already. Just now, he doesn’t want to play it through another time. He wants to stay cradled in Steve’s arms, in the place that belongs only to them, and pretend, just for a moment, that everything will be alright.  
  
* * *  
  
“You look lovely,” Natasha tells him. She secures his cufflinks, and then uses her bare hands to smooth the lines of his velvet jacket, over his shoulders and down his arms. “Fit for any princess.”  
  
“Thank you,” Bucky says, cordially. He wants to scream, but it isn’t her responsibility, to deal with him in his current state. She’s only doing her job. It wouldn’t be fair, for him to burden her with the nightmare tangle of thoughts at war in his brain.  
  
“Which crown would you prefer?” She moves away, toward the heavy glass case she’d struggled to carry in earlier, that holds his various jeweled pieces on scarlet cushions.  
  
“None,” Bucky decides. He doesn’t look back at her, but rather remains focused on his reflection in the mirror. He does look nice; he’s willing at least to admit that. Although he’d much rather look nice for nearly any other possible occasion, even ones he can’t conjure in his imagination.  
  
“Your father said …” Natasha doesn’t finish the sentence, and Bucky bristles.  
  
Because he couldn’t care less what his father said, and because he loathes that Natasha – a smart, kind, hardworking girl who has been at the castle nearly as long as Bucky has – still, after all these years, doesn’t feel quite comfortable speaking her mind. Bucky would like to know the end of that sentence. He would like for her to contradict him, to tell him he’s wrong, without fearing repercussions. So many things might have been different, if Steve hadn’t been the first person outside Bucky’s immediate family to ever tell him that he was wrong.  
  
“I’m sure he did.” Bucky licks his lips and turns to her. He tries to keep his expression approachable, even though inside he’s simmering in anger. “You won’t get in trouble. This is my choice.”  
  
“I’m not worried about getting in trouble,” she tells him, with a quirked eyebrow, and he almost believes her. “Are you sure?”  
  
“I’m sure. If I am to select a wife, she should like me for who I am, don’t you think? Not for the jewels atop my head.”  
  
Natasha regards him with a small frown on her face. Bucky is expecting her to disagree, as he thinks anyone would. Marriage, as he well knows, has naught to do with love, for people like him. It’s about position and alliances. Instead, she leaves the glass case on the desk where she’d placed it and walks back over to him. She fixes his collar and offers him a small smile.  
  
“Any one of them would be lucky to have you,” she says. Before she excuses herself from his rooms, she kisses his cheek.  
  
It leaves his skin tingling.  
  
Peggy is waiting for him, just outside his door. She looks splendid, her dress a vivid deep purple, her warm brown hair arranged artfully, her own gold crown glittering in the light from the torches on the walls. Bucky expects her to have something to say about his bare head, but she doesn’t. She takes his arm, smiling at him so widely her eyes nearly disappear, and leads him down the hallway. Were they not done up in their finest, Bucky might feel like he was being marched to the gallows.  
  
“I promise, this isn’t as horrible as you think,” Peggy tells him, clandestinely as they approach the grand doors of the ballroom.  
  
Bucky only nods. If it were Becca, clutching his arm in silken gloves just now, he might speak freely. Then again, nothing significant would be different if it were. Becca might understand, more than Peggy does, why Bucky dreads this so ferociously. But Becca wouldn’t be able to stop it any more than Peggy could. Bucky’s future, since the day he was born, has always been leading here. This moment was predestined, before the thought of his existence was even conceived. Nothing he’s done, nothing he _could_ have done, would have altered the path he’s always been on. It has always, always been leading here. And now he’s standing on the precipice of it, unable to reckon with it but far too small to halt its unrelenting forward momentum.  
  
The ballroom is bathed in splendor. Bucky has always been intimidated by this room, with its vaulted ceilings and tall stained-glass windows. It’s packed nearly to the rafters with nobles and statesmen and their wives and daughters; so many lush, colorful gowns littered along the floor that if Bucky lets his eyes unfocus, it almost looks like the spread of wildflowers near the creek where he’d taken Steve and Sam and Thor, such a short and yet long time ago. He wishes desperately he were back there right now, with his friends, instead of here among hopeful contestants in a game he never agreed to play. They all curtsey, as he enters, sinking deeply toward the floor, decorated heads bowing. Formal, impersonal. Worst of all, subservient. Their gowns spread out along the stone floor like running water.  
  
Across the expanse, at the head of the room with his parents and Daniel, Bucky catches sight of Steve. His dark suit is a stark contrast to his pale, peachy skin. His golden-blond hair is swept neatly to one side, blue eyes visible even this far away, as if they’re beacons; sirens calling to Bucky from a rough, unforgiving sea.  
  
His throat catches as he swallows over the lump in it. As Peggy walks with him, regal and magnificent, down the pathway left in the middle of the throng, Bucky squeezes his molars together so tightly it’s painful. Steve’s smile is tight and forced, and his eyes tell a similar story. It takes every amount of strength Bucky has ever had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  
  
* * *


	14. Gardenia (Secret Love)

He’s maybe never been more embarrassed in all his years, as he is when he reaches the head of the room and the King brings him up onto the raised platform, cloaked in wine-colored velvet himself, and formally announces Bucky, as if he were someone important. As if he were talented, or brave, or smart, or anything worthy of such pageantry. Bucky is just a person. Just a boy, who happens to have been born with royal blood. He’s never done anything to make himself worthy of it. He’s never earned a single thing, not the clothes on his back or the food on his plate or the admiration of the sea of faces smiling up at him. He’s sure his own face is as red as a poppy, sweat beading uncomfortably along his hairline, appearing nothing close to stately or accomplished.  
  
At the King’s direction, the musicians begin to play. Lovely, floaty music fills the hall. Bucky can’t look at Steve, as his father and mother clasp hands together in the center of the floor and open the ball. It’s a tiny mercy, that Bucky wasn’t forced to select one from the crowd of girls below him and dance with her alone with everyone watching. He’s not sure he could have withstood it. Peggy and Daniel join them after a moment, and then more couples, and more until the room is filled with twirling bodies in colorful dresses, like spring blossoms floating along a babbling brook.  
  
Steve moves in closer next to him, near enough to lean over and say softly into his ear, “you can’t just stand here. Ask somebody to dance.”  
  
“Would you like to dance?” Bucky says back, in a pinched voice, still staring out at the floor where young, pretty faces are turned hopefully towards him like flowers to the sun. Only he isn’t like the sun. He can’t shine on them, give them warmth or light or sustenance. He’d only leave them wilted.  
  
“More than anything,” Steve whispers. “But you know we can’t. Go ask one of them.”  
  
Bucky doesn’t answer. His heart just races, thumping into his ribs.  
  
“Bucky,” Steve says, a little more urgently. “Listen to me. It’s just a dance. You’re not proposing marriage. I’m sure they’re all perfectly nice. Go dance with them, for one hour, and then excuse yourself and come find me.”  
  
“Where will you be?”  
  
“There is a broom cupboard near the servants’ entrance to the castle, on the North side. Do you know it?”  
  
“I know the North entrance. I’ve never noticed a cupboard.”  
  
“Precisely. It’s in a shadowy corner, most of the staff don’t seem to know it’s there. It’s nearly empty.”  
  
Bucky frowns, and chances a glance over his shoulder. Steve’s eyes are shining and his lips are fighting a smile. “Then how do _you_ know it’s there?”  
  
“I like to explore.”  
  
“Are you still going out, at night?” Bucky can’t believe he’s never thought to ask that, in the weeks since they’ve been sneaking around together.  
  
“Sometimes.” Steve’s eyes move away from Bucky’s gaze, and then quickly back. “Your father is looking. One hour, then meet me.”  
  
Bucky nods quickly. “Alright.”  
  
Steve smiles at him, the promise of something in it, and then he’s moving down the steps to the dancefloor. Bucky watches him wading through the bodies, tapping Daniel on the shoulder, and asking if he can cut in to dance with Peggy. Bucky manages a small smile, as he watches Steve take his sister in his arms and spin her elegantly around while she beams at him. Steve has that effect on people, and it’s real, now, since he’s stopped pretending just to charm them like he did when he first arrived and actually seems to be happy. He’s so beautiful, sunshine radiating off him that makes people want to be close to him just to soak it up. Bucky always wants to be nearby, to hold Steve’s hand, kiss him, rest against his solid chest. He never feels whole, anymore, unless he’s with Steve. And here he stands, trying to gather the nerve to ask someone else to dance with him.  
  
Catching another glare from the King lights a fire under Bucky enough to get him going, and he follows in Steve’s footsteps down to the floor. Jewel-adorned heads perk up as he approaches, and Bucky swallows back a wave of nausea. Rather than engage in the process of sizing them up and making a real choice, he merely approaches the one who happens to be standing closest to him. She’s blond, like Steve, only her eyes are green and her cheeks are dusted with rouge. Her dress is pink, and frilly, and so big around the bottom of the skirt that Bucky doesn’t know how she manages to fit through doorways.  
  
“Your Highness,” she says, as he steps in a bit closer. She lowers herself into a deep curtsy. Bucky wants to grab her and pull her back up.  
  
“James,” he tells her. He holds out his hand, taking hers and kissing the back of her silk glove.  
  
“Elizabeth,” she answers, with a hopeful smile.  
  
“Would you care to dance?”  
  
“I’d love to.” She smiles again, and it seems a little more genuine this time.  
  
He leads her a few steps out onto the floor, acutely aware of how closely they’re being watched by, well, everyone. It’s maybe a few dozen pairs of eyes upon him, no more than 100, but it feels like millions. Her hand is small in his, and the waist he wraps his other arm around thin, but she is pretty, now that he gets a closer look as they begin to waltz. Her eyes are kind, like Steve’s.  
  
They barely speak, as he leads her through a song. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, and she doesn’t seem to either, so they just make uncomfortable eye contact as they move across the floor. She keeps blushing even deeper than the paint on her cheeks. He thanks her when the song ends, and she curtsies again, and he moves on. Four more songs, four more pretty girls with fancy dresses and sparkling jewelry and blushed cheeks. Four more names for him to instantly forget. Then five, then six. Some of them make easy small-talk, some of them are more confident dancers than others, some of them grip his hand too tightly and laugh at his sad attempts at jokes too loudly, as if they’re putting on a show for the benefit of everyone watching them. It all blurs together. One hour, Steve said. That’s how long Bucky has to endure this, before he can take a break.  
  
He grits his teeth and approaches the seventh maiden.  
  
“Would you like to dance?” he asks, to a girl with skin the color of rosewood and midnight-black hair and a canary yellow dress.  
  
Unlike the others, she doesn’t curtsey. She doesn’t take his hand right away, either. She just looks at him, dark mahogany eyes narrowing slightly. Steve used to look at him like that, when he was trying to see past whatever act Bucky was putting on to the person he might be underneath all the formalities.  
  
“It’s alright if you’d rather not,” he says, caught off guard by her intense gaze.  
  
“Are _you_ alright?” she asks. He isn’t expecting that either.  
  
“Oh. I … suppose so.”  
  
“Are you sure? You look like you could use a bit of fresh air.”  
  
She has a pleasant, bouncy accent, and her smile is tentative but warm, and Bucky feels the tension melt from his shoulders. He nods gratefully. “I could, yes.”  
  
“Take my arm,” she says, offering it, “so they won’t think we’re fleeing.”  
  
He does, and walks with her across the room toward the balcony. She smells like lavender. “They might think we’re fleeing anyway.”  
  
“You can blame me, if the guards come after you.” Her voice lilts in the pattern of a joke, and Bucky does laugh.  
  
“What sort of gentleman would I be if I let you take the fall?”  
  
“Not a very valiant one,” she agrees, laughing as well.  
  
The cool air hits their faces as they walk through the open doors and out into the starlight. Bucky has stood with Steve on many balconies under many sparkling night skies, but never this one.  
  
“I’m Shuri,” she says, once they’ve reached the railing. She turns to him, releasing his arm and holding out her hand. He takes it, and instead of letting him bring it to his lips for a kiss, she shakes it like a man would.  
  
“James.”  
  
“I know.” Another smile, and the flash of dark eyes that see too much. Bucky is unnerved by it, while at the same time, comforted.  
  
“Thank you, for saving me from all that.” He gestures behind them, and catches sight through the windows of a crowd gathered to watch them. “Good Lord,” he mutters, turning back away from it.  
  
“That’s very rude,” Shuri says, frowning at their audience. “You aren’t a circus performer.”  
  
“It feels like I am.”  
  
Taking Bucky completely by surprise, Shuri marches back towards the door, clapping her hands. Loudly, as if she’s shooing a flock of pigeons, she says, “on your way, ladies! You’ll all get your turns.”  
  
Bucky watches with wide eyes as she manages to chase them all away from the window, and a hysterical giggle escapes his lips.  
  
When Shuri turns back to him, she’s grinning triumphantly. “That should give us a few moments peace, at least. It won’t last long. Their curiosity will get the better of them soon enough, I’m afraid.”  
  
“I’m sure you’re right.” Bucky laughs again, at the absurdity of the situation. “I should be flattered, I suppose.”  
  
“I don’t suppose you have to be anything,” she counters, joining him back at the intricately carved stone railing. “I’m not sure I would enjoy this either, if I was the center of all attention like that.”  
  
“Did you want to be here, tonight?” Bucky asks.  
  
She frowns at him in confusion.  
  
“When you received the invitation,” he explains. “Did you want to attend, or did your father make you?”  
  
“Perhaps a little of both,” she answers. “I don’t regret being here. Although I don’t think anything is going to come of it.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“You are in love with someone, Prince James. But it is not me. And it’s not any of them, either.”  
  
Bucky swallows, and nearly squirms. He’s not sure he likes the idea that someone he just met can see through him so easily. It took Steve at least a few days, to have Bucky’s number. “How can you tell?”  
  
“Because you’ve looked miserable since the moment you stepped into that ballroom. The person you’d like to dance with is not here, are they?”  
  
It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s close enough to it that Bucky feels trapped by it. He nods. “Something like that.”  
  
“I am sorry to hear it.” She pats his arm reassuringly. “I wish you luck enduring the rest of the evening. And I hope sometime soon you can dance with the one you truly want.”  
  
“Thank you,” Bucky says, meaning it so intensely it burns in his chest.  
  
He stays with Shuri on the balcony for as long as he thinks he can, without arousing suspicion, and then returns. There’s time for two more songs with two more hopeful suitors, and then Bucky tells his mother that he needs to use the washroom and slips out of the ballroom. He doesn’t run, but wants to, as he makes his way down long torch-lit hallways and narrow spiral stairwells to the North end of the castle, finding the corridor where he knows the servants’ entrance to be, although he can’t recall if he’s ever actually been in this part of the castle.  
  
He finds the door, off to one side and bathed in shadows as Steve said it would be, and knocks lightly. “It’s me,” he says quietly, against the wood, hoping a maid or a footman isn’t about to burst out, startled and looking for an explanation of what Bucky could possibly be doing.  
  
When it opens, thankfully, it’s Steve’s smiling face that greets him. “Fancy seeing you here,” Steve jokes, and Bucky rolls his eyes.  
  
“Quick, let me in before someone sees.” He pushes Steve back and crowds into the closet with him, shutting the door securely behind him.  
  
Steve’s eyes twinkle; Bucky can see it even in the near blackness of the enclosed space. “Hello. I missed you.”  
  
“For an hour?”  
  
“Well. An hour watching you put your hands on other people.” Steve steps into him, fingers curling around Bucky’s waist. He drags the tip of his nose along Bucky’s cheek. “I didn’t love it.”  
  
“Me neither.” Bucky shudders. He thinks he’s been holding it all together fairly well, until now. There’s been a storm inside him, but he’s managed to keep it there. Suddenly, it all feels uncontainable. He wraps his arms around Steve’s shoulders, and tips forward into him.  
  
“Oh.” Steve holds him tighter, keeping him upright as Bucky’s knees wobble and he presses his face into Steve’s neck, blinking back unexpected tears. “Buck,” Steve murmurs, kissing his hair. “It’s alright. I’m here.”  
  
“I missed you, too,” Bucky whispers, emotion catching in his throat. “I’m sorry I made a joke out of it.”  
  
“Shh,” Steve soothes. He rubs Bucky’s back, rocking him gently, moving from foot to foot. Almost like they’re dancing. So close, to what Bucky had wished for earlier. “It’s alright. You’re doing well. As good as anyone could expect.”  
  
“They’re all so … I don’t know. Pretty, and nice, and they all deserve to marry someone who’ll love them, and it’s not me. I just want you,” Bucky admits. It’s nothing they haven’t said before, in hushed tones while wrapped up together on the banks of the creek, but it feels dangerous anyway.  
  
Steve nudges Bucky’s face up from his neck so they can kiss, lips sliding together. It’s practiced, now, but it still feels fresh, warm, exciting. It makes Bucky shiver, makes him want to taste the sweetness of Steve’s mouth, feel the firm grip of his fingers. Steve turns them around as he devours Bucky’s mouth, backing him up slowly into the stone wall. He crowds into Bucky’s space, the long line of his body trapping Bucky, warmth and muscle pressing into him. Bucky aches so instantly for more, as he always does, for deeper kisses and wandering hands and the sweet, precious noises Steve makes. For the way it spreads heat through his own body, for the rush of blood and the way his head spins.  
  
“Careful,” Bucky finds himself whispering, regretfully, as Steve’s hands tug at his clothes. Much as he wishes they could, they can’t stay in here for the rest of the evening, and Bucky needs to look presentable when he makes his way back to the ballroom.  
  
“Wish I didn’t have to be,” Steve says, in a low, raspy voice that flies straight between Bucky’s legs. “Wish I could leave you messy. Smelling like me, with bite marks on your neck. So everyone would know you’re mine.”  
  
“Steve,” Bucky whimpers, eyes fluttering closed as Steve kisses his jaw.  
  
“You are,” Steve continues. “Mine. Not any of theirs. They can dance with you and flirt with you but they can’t have you.”  
  
He’s never said anything like that before. He’s always been gentle and loving, never rough or possessive. Bucky would never have guessed how much he’d love it. How it would make him feel owned, wanted, desired. He’s hard in his slacks, and he needs to get them off before it leaves a stain that people will notice.  
  
“Steve,” he says again, more urgently this time.  
  
“Can I try something new?” Steve asks – more of a beg than a question. His eyes are wild when he pulls back enough to look at Bucky, pupils wide, simmering in need. Bucky inhales on a hiss at the sight of him, at the idea that wanting _him_ is what’s made Steve so crazy.  
  
He nods quickly. Anything, everything Steve wants, Bucky wants it too. He’d said as much, the very first time they touched each other, and Steve had promised to show him everything, and hasn’t, yet. He’s been sweet about moving slowly, letting Bucky get used to it all when it’s all so new, but right now Bucky wants that _everything_ again. Even more than he’d wanted it back then.  
  
Steve kisses him, a long, lingering press of his lips, and then he sinks slowly to his knees.  
  
He undoes Bucky’s pants carefully, pulling them down just enough to gently free his erection from them. Bucky’s entire body explodes in heat and nerves. Steve’s never seen him, like this. Never this bare, this close. He’s thankful it’s dark in the room.  
  
Even though he must be straining to see, Steve moans at the sight before him, and that makes Bucky flush for a different reason. “Gorgeous,” he whispers, before leaning forward and taking the head into his mouth.  
  
Bucky’s mouth falls open on a silent gasp. He grips at Steve’s hair, struggling not to pull too hard, as Steve’s tongue, warm and wet and soft, circles around him once, twice, and then he’s tipping forward even more, taking more of Bucky into his mouth.  
  
“Oh,” Bucky sighs. His head falls back, thunks painfully into the stone behind him, toes curling in his shoes. Nothing has ever felt like this. He never imagined in his wildest fantasies that anything _could_ feel like this.  
  
Steve lets him go, just long enough to blink up at him and ask, “is this alright?”  
  
Bucky nods, unable to speak, unable to move the taught line of his body in any one direction for fear he’ll lose it too quickly into Steve’s warm mouth and Steve will be angry with him. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, where what comes out of him is supposed to _go_ when someone has their mouth on him. He never thought to wonder about it.  
  
Steve smiles at him, eyes gleaming in the shadows. He curls his fist around Bucky’s cock at the base, strokes slowly as his lips close over the head again and he sucks, delicious heat and pressure sending sparks along Bucky’s veins.  
  
“Oh, fuck,” falls uncontrollably from Bucky’s lips. He’s never said that word before. He’s not sure he’s ever _thought_ that word before. It bubbled up from a spot deep inside him that he didn’t even know existed.  
  
Steve _moans_ around him when he hears it, the vibrations spreading through Bucky like wildfire, and he swears again because he can’t help it. It feels too good, it’s all too good and he’s close to that razor’s edge so quickly it would be embarrassing if he had any capacity left for such emotions.  
  
“Steve,” he breathes, tugging at his hair. Trying desperately to warn him.  
  
“It’s alright,” Steve tells him, still stroking along Bucky’s shaft with sure, strong fingers. With his other hand he cups the sac underneath, squeezing gently, sending stars into Bucky’s vision. “You can, it’s okay. I want you to.”  
  
His tongue digs briefly into the slit Bucky’s sure is weeping, and then he slides back down, swallows twice and Bucky can’t hold it back any longer. He comes with a shout muffled by his own hand clamped tight over his mouth, and Steve doesn’t pull back, he _swallows_ it, moaning as if it’s decadent. It _can’t_ be, and Bucky’s humiliated by the thought of it, but Steve’s mouth is still so good on him and it carries on for ages, the most intense it’s ever felt.  
  
He feels a bit as if he’s been run over by a carriage, when his cock finally stops pulsing into Steve’s mouth. His skin prickles, and his vision is blurry, and if it weren’t for Steve’s hands pinning his hips to the wall Bucky might slide down it on weakened legs and land with his bare backside on the dusty floor. Steve tucks him back into his slacks and re-fastens the buttons, and then he’s rising back up to his feet and cupping Bucky’s heated cheeks in his hands.  
  
“Good?” he asks, teasing, and Bucky laughs shakily.  
  
“You could say that.”  
  
Steve laughs too, and kisses him. Bucky pushes his tongue into Steve’s mouth, wanting to know, and the taste left behind is bitter and a little salty and Bucky doesn’t mind it at all. If anything, it has his belly doing backflips again. He pulls Steve in closer by his waist, feels the hardness in Steve’s slacks pressing into his thigh.  
  
“Can I?” Bucky asks breathlessly. “To you?”  
  
“Only if you want,” Steve whispers back. “I love your hands.”  
  
“Can’t promise I’ll be any good at it. But I’d like to try.”  
  
Steve nods, still caressing his tongue into Bucky’s mouth between the pieces of their broken conversation.  
  
* * *


	15. Honeysuckle (Happiness)

The rest of the evening drags, but Bucky makes it through without embarrassing himself too thoroughly. He keeps catching Steve’s eye, from across the room, as he dances, and Steve keeps winking at him. It makes Bucky feel warm inside, enjoying the thrill of sharing a secret. Enjoying that he can still feel Steve’s fingers on him and the warm press of his lips, and that he’s one of only two in the entire hall who knows about it.  
  
He escapes a conversation with his father after the orchestra has adjourned to sincere applause for their performance and their guests have all departed – those who live close enough back in their carriages and those who don’t retired to their rooms for the night – and slips undetected to Steve’s suite. Steve pulls Bucky into his arms the moment he opens the door to him, kissing him breathless and holding him close.  
  
“You made it,” Steve tells him. “You survived.”  
  
“Thanks to you. Can I stay?” Bucky asks.  
  
“Of course you can.” Steve kisses the tip of his nose and smiles at him, turquoise eyes glittering in the candlelight.  
  
Bucky undresses, realizing only then that in his haste to get to Steve he hadn’t thought to bring any nightclothes with him. He’d told Natasha, hours ago, not to wait up for him, just to leave the clothes on his bed and that he’d be fine on his own. They’re likely still sitting there, folded neatly on top of the quilt. Without proper planning, they’ll still be there in the morning for Natasha to find. Bucky will have to endeavour to wake up early enough to beat her to it.  
  
Steve looks at him and seems to realize what’s happened without Bucky having to say it. Rather than continuing to button up the shirt he’d already put on, he removes it instead, and then the undershirt after it, revealing his broad, bare chest. It’s an evening of firsts; Bucky has never seen Steve undressed before, either. The slopes of his muscles make Bucky’s mouth water. Three more tattoos reveal themselves against his pale skin. A line of poetry on his hip, a rudimentary sun along his ribcage, and a more detailed rose just above a pink nipple.  
  
“I forgot you hadn’t seen the rest of them,” Steve says, when he notices Bucky looking. “In some ways it feels like we know every inch of each other but we don’t, yet.”  
  
Bucky holds his hand out, and Steve takes it and allows himself to be pulled closer so Bucky can trail gentle fingertips over the ink. Steve’s face is twisted into a wince when Bucky looks back up at him, like he thinks Bucky’s about to criticize. Like his father did, like perhaps others have as well, meeting Steve with scorn and disapproval over the artwork he’s chosen to display on his skin. Bucky shakes his head, takes Steve’s cheek in his hand and guides him into a slow, warm kiss.  
  
“They’re beautiful,” he says into Steve’s lips.  
  
“You are.” Steve’s hands tug at Bucky’s undershirt, hesitating just long enough to let Bucky refuse if he wants to, but he doesn’t want to, so Steve pulls his off, too. He looks down with reverence in his expression, brushing his thumb over Bucky’s browner nipple and smiling at him. Bucky’s shoulders aren’t as broad and his arms aren’t as strong but Steve looks at him like Bucky’s chest is the nicest thing he’s ever seen.  
  
“What does _To The End_ really mean?” Bucky asks, as his fingertips find the inside of Steve’s arm where the soft, pale flesh is marked with the words. It’s healed, now, no longer red and angry like it was the first time Steve had shown him. “It can’t mean you really want to go to the end of the world, like you said. That’s not possible.”  
  
Instead of answering, Steve steps around him and pulls the blankets back on his bed. He crawls into it, settling on his back, and reaches for Bucky’s hand to pull him in. Bucky settles facing him, sharing a pillow, Steve’s leg lifting up and hooking over Bucky’s knees to keep him in close.  
  
Bucky thinks he isn’t going to get an answer, but then Steve says, “on the day I got it, my father and I were fighting. I don’t remember what about, it was probably nonsense.”  
  
He sighs heavily before he continues, and Bucky moves his fingers to Steve’s face. Steve’s smooth cheek tilts into Bucky’s hand.  
  
“He said to me, that he would die embarrassed that I was his son. That centuries from now, historians would cite my coronation as the cause of our kingdom’s downfall, like the sacking of Rome.”  
  
“That’s very harsh.”  
  
“The moment he said it, his face went white and he took it back. Promised he hadn’t really meant it. I believe him, now. We both often said unkind things in anger, we’re alike in that way. But in that moment, I just wanted to run as far away as I possibly could, and the edge of the world was the farthest thing I could think of.”  
  
Bucky wishes he knew what to say, wishes mere words could make up for the hurt he sees in Steve’s eyes, but he knows they couldn’t. Instead he shuffles in closer, brings his lips to Steve’s forehead. Steve tugs gently at him, until Bucky’s properly in his arms, head pillowed on Steve’s chest. The skin is warm, under Bucky’s ear, and his heartbeat is steady and comforting. Bucky has never, in his whole life, been held like this.  
  
“Tell me about the world,” Bucky says, as Steve’s fingers float like a feather up and down his spine. “Our village, and the one near your home. The people you’ve met. The things you’ve seen, when you go out into it after we’re all asleep.”  
  
“Let me show you?” Steve asks in a careful whisper.  
  
Bucky’s lips press together. It makes his heart race, considering it. But Steve’s arms are safe. He wouldn’t let any harm come to either of them, Bucky trusts that. He smiles and kisses the skin beneath his lips. “Alright.”  
  
* * *  
  
His bedclothes are nowhere to be seen, when Bucky arrives back at his rooms early the next morning. He’d kissed a still-sleeping Steve on the forehead, delighting in the sight of him so at peace, and slipped away. The state of his room, clearly already tended to by Natasha, makes his stomach churn. And then, with a different sort of embarrassment flipping through him, he realizes she is likely to have assumed he spent the night in the guest chambers of one of the young ladies who stayed. A perfect cover, in a way, since that would not be _acceptable_ , but certainly _more_ acceptable than the truth, and Natasha keeps his secrets, like any good servant.  
  
Like any good _friend_ , he corrects sternly, in his own brain.  
  
He buzzes underneath his skin all day. Finds himself sharing glances with Steve, ones that must very nearly have actual sparks breaking in the line between their eyes. He’s clumsy and distracted, and if anyone other than Steve notices, no one speaks up about it. Bucky’s not entirely unused to that. There are perks, it seems, to being overlooked in the way that he always is. He never knew that, before. Never had any good reason to want to be ignored by his family until now.  
  
“How do we go about it?” he asks Steve, covertly, while they’re tucked away into Merlin’s empty stall.  
  
“What are you two whispering about over there?” Sam demands, from the other end of the stables, where he’s helping Thor attach a new set of shoes to one of Steve’s horses.  
  
“None of your business,” Steve calls back, but with a kind, teasing lilt to his voice.  
  
They both hear Sam muttering mutinously about it, and share a laugh.  
  
Speaking seriously, Steve says, “head off to bed as early as you think your family would believe you’re really going to sleep. Not so early as to arouse suspicion. Stay there until your maid has left for the night, it’s important that someone see you in your chambers. Then, come find me in mine.”  
  
“I like yours,” Bucky says softly.  
  
The grin that spreads over Steve’s face is heated, nearly predatory, and he glances quickly toward the stall opening to make sure they’re still unseen and then pulls Bucky in for a quick kiss.  
  
Dinner drags. It isn’t any longer than usual but it feels like an eternity, like Bucky might have aged 50 years by the time his father finally pushes his chair back and announces they’ll retire to the sitting room with their brandy.  
  
“You first,” Steve whispers to him, crowding in close behind Bucky as they walk along the hallway.  
  
Bucky nods, and dares not look behind him to catch a glimpse of Steve’s face. He sits, with Steve and his family, for maybe 20 minutes, with the fire roaring and the conversation muted to cotton fluff in his ears, before he excuses himself, feigning a slight headache.  
  
“Feel better, darling,” Winifred says to him, as he leans over to kiss her cheek.  
  
His heart races as he leaves the room, momentarily terrified they’ll be able to see deceit on his face or maybe smell it in the sweat that beads along his hairline, but then he’s at the door, and through the door, and out the door, back into the hallway, free to hurry unceremoniously up the stairs toward his rooms. He’s panting by the time he reaches them, and he shuts the door briskly behind himself and leans back against it, smiling breathlessly, an unbridled laugh bursting forth from his chest that he tries to hide behind hands clasped over his mouth.  
  
He undresses, intending at first to search his drawers for something casual and nondescript to put on but then remembering Natasha has to see him off to bed before he does that, to complete the rouse. He changes into his bedclothes, instead, having to search a few different cabinets before he locates them. Then he waits, heart pounding, on the sofa by the fire. Someone knocks at the door after only a few minutes, and Natasha enters, looking harried.  
  
“You were quicker than me,” she tells him, heading to his bed to turn the sheets down. “I apologize.”  
  
Bucky shakes his head insistently. “Nonsense, you had no way of knowing I would retire so early.”  
  
“Do you need anything?” She brushes wayward strands of auburn hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist and looks over at him with her wide green eyes. “I was told you weren’t well, I can fetch a tonic from – ”  
  
“Can I tell you a secret?” Bucky interrupts.  
  
Her eyebrows raise and she nods.  
  
“I’m not ill. I just couldn’t listen, anymore, to my father bragging about his latest Northern conquest. He is not nearly as skilled a conversationalist as he believes.”  
  
Natasha’s lips part momentarily, and then press together hard enough to turn the skin around them white and bloodless, her gaze dropping as she tries desperately to fight back the smile Bucky can see tugging at the corners of her eyes. “I won’t tell,” she promises.  
  
“Thank you.” Bucky smiles back, to let her know it’s alright.  
  
“Have a pleasant evening, Your Highness,” she bids, with a polite bow of her head, and makes her exit, smirking despite her efforts.  
  
Bucky waits a few minutes, just to ensure she won’t be back, and then he digs in his drawers once again, and finds his oldest pair of riding slacks and a simple white shirt. For good measure, he crumples the shirt up into a ball in his hands a few times before he puts it on, to disrupt the perfect creases and crisp cotton. Finally he slips on the riding boots Natasha has not had time to clean, yet, since Bucky went riding in the rain the day before. Assessing himself in the mirror, he messes up his hair to complete the illusion. He still, in all likelihood, is entirely too neat and proper to truly pass for a regular person that belongs in a tavern or on a muddy village street. Hopefully in darkness, it won’t be quite so easy to tell.  
  
The walk to Steve’s rooms feels endless and instant all at once, as if it takes Bucky a lifetime to get there while at the same time in the blink of an eye he’s outside Steve’s door, knocking quietly in case there are footmen nearby down an adjacent hallway. The door opens quickly, and Bucky is ushered inside.  
  
Steve’s cheeks are flushed. He’s donned in an outfit similar to Bucky’s, although his clothes are dusty and his slacks are torn at the seams of the pockets.  
  
“How have you managed to keep those from being mended?” Bucky asks, pointing to the tears. “If Natasha found clothing of mine in that state she would wrestle it from my hands and have it sewn back to perfection before I even knew what happened.”  
  
“Sam knows their purpose,” Steve reminds him. “He knows to leave these things alone.”  
  
“Has he gone with you?”  
  
“Back at home, a few times. He felt it too much of a risk, here. I missed his company, but respected his wishes.” Steve’s eyes narrow slightly, searching over Bucky’s face. “You’re not having second thoughts?”  
  
Bucky shakes his head. He is sure, for perhaps the first time in his entire life, in his decision. “Not one.”  
  
Steve grins at him, perfect pink lips and crinkled eyes. Bucky wants to push him down onto the bed, strip him bare, and lick every inch of him.  
  
“How do we get to the ground?” he asks.  
  
From a bottom dresser drawer, Steve pulls out a length of rope, winded into a neat circle, with thick knots tied every foot or so. He holds it up, eyes still twinkling, and Bucky shakes his head in wonder and lets out a heavy exhale.  
  
“You’re like …”  
  
Licking his lips slowly, Steve saunters back towards him, moving in close enough for Bucky to feel warm breath on his nose. His presence is so large and imposing, and it makes Bucky feel safe and dangerous all at once. “What am I like?”  
  
“A thief,” Bucky answers, as his heart flutters, “or a pirate.”  
  
“How thrilling,” Steve muses, teasing him. “Does that offend your delicate sensibilities?”  
  
“Quite the opposite.”  
  
Steve grabs him around the waist and yanks Bucky in roughly for a deep kiss, open-mouthed and messy. He pulls back much sooner than Bucky would like and holds up the rope. “Ready?”  
  
“Ready.”  
  
It’s utterly terrifying, to climb carefully out of an open window after Steve has secured the rope and move slowly down it, gripping tight with his hands and resting clumsy feet on the knots, but Bucky does it. _Don’t look down_ , Steve had warned him, so Bucky doesn’t, staring resolutely at the bricks in front of his face so as not to disorient himself. The warm night air hits his skin, flushed with the effort, and the full moon is their only source of light. Bucky stumbles, once, but catches himself, and laughs nervously. By the time he reaches the ground he’s sweating, and his heart is still pounding, but he’s smiling. He’s _proud_ of himself. It’s almost an entirely unfamiliar feeling.  
  
“Off we go,” Steve says, grinning like a devil in the silvery moonlight.  
  
“Won’t someone notice the rope?” Bucky frets, looking back up at it hanging, so glaringly, from three floors up.  
  
“They haven’t yet.” Steve reaches out with his hand, and Bucky takes it, confidence surging through him at their touch like Steve is able to transfer it through their skin.  
  
They sneak across the lawn to the stables, keeping quiet so they don’t wake Thor, and then they’re flying back across the lawn on horseback, heading toward the lights in the distance. A sense of sheer liberty washes over Bucky, soaking down as deep as his bones. He lets it swell inside him, chasing out all the nagging doubts, all the worries. Even if he never does this again, Bucky is going to remember this feeling for the rest of his days. Riding Merlin at break-neck speed always makes him feel free, but this is different.  
  
“Tell me how you feel,” Steve shouts, over the roar of the wind as they fly through bare fields. “Nervous?”  
  
“Excited!” Bucky calls back. Steve’s responding smile is dazzling, even in the darkness.  
  
As they approach the village, Bucky is surprised by how quiet they find it. Their horses slow at their urging on the leather reins, and he breathes in humid air as he takes in the view before them. Cobblestone streets, lamps that cast dim light and long shadows over humble buildings, constructed from wood and plaster and thatched rooves. There are low fences, and troughs he assumes are for horses, and piles of firewood stacked up against the side of houses. Bucky has never even imagined anything like it. The few buildings he can see, from hovering here on the outskirts, must be smaller inside that his _bedroom_ , let alone the rest of his chambers. The idea that more than one person lives in each of these dismal structures has his mouth falling open and staying that way.  
  
He can feel Steve looking at him, sideways to Bucky’s left, but he doesn’t look back. He’s too enraptured by the sight before them, and too embarrassed to admit how stunned he is. Steve was right, all those months ago, when he’d angrily posited that Bucky had no idea how regular people lived.  
  
“Come on,” Steve says, quietly, nudging his horse gently in the sides to urge her on.  
  
“It’s deserted,” Bucky says, as he follows on Merlin. Eight steel horseshoes click on the stone pathways. “Is everyone asleep already?”  
  
“Not if you know where to go,” Steve answers. Bucky can hear the sparkle in Steve’s eyes, even without being able to see them. The idea, that he can place an expression on Steve’s face without seeing it, fills him with warmth. He used to know Becca that well. He’s quite sure she’s the only other one.  
  
Bucky and Merlin trail after Steve, along the winding streets. They pass a few figures cloaked in shadows as they go, and no one looks up at them or pays them a second thought. Bucky finds it exhilarating; the idea that he might be entirely anonymous, here, blending in among the locals like a stone in a pond. For the very first time in his life, he considers the possibility that there isn’t a soul among them who actually knows what he looks like. He doesn’t suppose, now that he thinks about it, his father would ever have paraded through the village displaying Bucky’s portrait. Most of these people are almost certainly aware of the existence of Prince James, the youngest of their royal family, but haven’t a clue as to his appearance. Bucky, in his plain clothes and on his plain horse devoid of any regal adornments, will be able to blend right in. He finds himself elated at the prospect.  
  
Steve finally halts his horse just outside what Bucky assumes is a tavern. There are candles lit inside, and the rumble of voices, and boisterous music soaring out through the open windows. Bucky watches as Steve gracefully jumps down from his ebony mare and strokes her gently along the nose before he leads her to a wooden railing along the side of the building where other horses are tethered. Steve wraps the reins around it and ties them into a knot, and then looks back at Bucky.  
  
“Coming?”  
  
Bucky wills his heart to stop pounding so obnoxiously in his chest. He isn’t heading to the gallows; there is no respectable reason he should be as anxious as he is. Steve seems to sense it. He walks over, reaching out when he’s close enough and asking wordlessly for Bucky’s hand. Bucky gives it to him; lets Steve help him down off Merlin. When their faces are near enough, protected under the cover of low light and a deserted street, Steve moves in to place a gentle kiss to Bucky’s lips. Bucky melts into it, as if it’s mindless, as if he has no control over himself whatsoever.  
  
“Do you trust me?” Steve murmurs, his lips moving against Bucky’s as he speaks.  
  
“Yes,” Bucky answers in a wisp of breath.  
  
Steve kisses him again and does not reply. Bucky is so besotted lately by the lovely sensation of Steve’s lips against his own that he’s quite sure he’ll never become accustomed to the way it feels. Steve takes Merlin’s reins from Bucky’s hand, and leads the tawny horse to the railing beside his own. He secures him, and then holds a hand out again for Bucky to take. He brings Bucky’s hand up to his mouth, kissing the back of Bucky’s knuckles, just before he lets it go. Then he walks toward the door of the tavern, and Bucky, nearly jolting out of his own skin, follows.  
  
* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my friend Kate for the picture for this chapter's header!


	16. Rose (Desire)

His senses are assaulted as Steve opens the heavy wooden door and leads Bucky into the tavern. The warm, orange glow of candlelight, so bright after the darkness of the streets outside that Bucky finds himself squinting against it for a moment before his eyes adjust. A throng of people, men and women, old and young in brown and tan and white clothing, in various states of repair, long skirts and tattered sleeves. The heat of their bodies moving about, crowded and close. Smells; smoke from the fires and from candle wicks in need of trimming, human sweat, a yeasty scent that Bucky realizes is the wafting fumes of ale from the tankards that litter dark tables. The sounds of raucous laughter, of table legs grinding along the stone floor, of voices shouting to be heard over the din. _Music_ , from a trio in the far corner of the room, playing instruments Bucky has never seen nor heard before this moment.  
  
As he blinks, absorbing it all, only one word comes to his mind. It’s _joyous_. In his two decades on this earth he’s never seen anything like it.  
  
Steve lets go of his hand, once they’re inside, but uses his elbow to nudge Bucky’s, and Bucky follows him over to a table for two against the wall. In the center of the table sits a meager, tall vase with a single cut daisy in it. Bucky sits and Steve beams at him from across it.  
  
“What do you think?” he asks expectantly, looking like its important to him that Bucky likes it.  
  
Bucky just shakes his head, wide-eyed and utterly speechless. Steve understands him all the same and smiles wider. Not for the first time, Bucky marvels at the beauty of his smile.  
  
“Back again so soon?”  
  
Bucky looks up, face turning on instinct toward the sound. A young woman with fiery red hair flowing nearly to her waist approaches them, wearing a dark dress and a friendly smile.  
  
“Couldn’t stay away,” Steve answers with a shrug. “Not when your pies are the best around.”  
  
“Since you refuse to tell us where you’re from, I suppose I’ll have to accept that as a compliment, rather than an indictment of the horrible cooking you’re used to.” She rests a rounded tray on her hip, jutted out casually to one side, and keeps on grinning at him.  
  
“It is certainly a compliment.” Steve holds his hand out in front of him, gesturing across the table. “I brought a friend, this time. This is Bucky.”  
  
The woman turns his way, fixing him with that dazzling smile and pretty green eyes. Bucky feels himself instantly start to sweat. “Hi, Bucky. I’m Wanda.”  
  
“Lovely –” Bucky begins, catching himself just as he was about to be entirely too formal to blend into this place and risk revealing them, “uh, I mean, it’s nice to meet you.”  
  
“Likewise.” Wanda reaches out, and it takes Bucky a second to realize she wants to shake his hand. It’s now the second time in as many days he’s shaken a woman’s hand. It’s not how things are usually done, in his world. But they aren’t in his world, they’re in hers, so he takes her hand and shakes it as he would if she were his father or a member of the court.  
  
“What can I get you boys?” she inquires, and far later than he should have, Bucky realizes she’s here to serve them, not just to converse with Steve. He had wondered only for a moment if he should be jealous, and now feels silly about it. Steve didn’t kiss him only moments ago in the moonlight just to then introduce him to a woman he’s interested in. They haven’t known each other their whole lives but Bucky knows him better than that.  
  
“The usual,” Steve says, and Bucky turns to him in surprise, raising his eyebrows. He knew Steve was sneaking out after dark but hadn’t realized he’d been to this particular tavern often enough to have a _usual_ order with the barmaid. Steve grins blushingly and shrugs.  
  
When he looks back up, he realizes with a start that Wanda is staring at him, waiting for his order. He’s never ordered anything before, food and drink just appear in front of him in the dining room. On his birthday their cook makes him all his favorites, but he’s never asked her to. It simply happens, as if by magic. In his head, Steve’s voice gently reminds _not by magic, by the hard work of dozens of men and women you never see_.  
  
“The same,” he answers, because he doesn’t have the first idea what sorts of things they might serve in a place like this, and is far too embarrassed to ask.  
  
“Wonderful. I’ll be back soon.” She winks at Steve as she makes her exit. Bucky watches her wander over toward another table, where a group of extremely large men are making quite a bit of noise, and she sticks a finger in their faces and nags at them to keep it down. Bucky would have been terrified to be anywhere near them, but this small, confident woman seems entirely comfortable snapping at them, and they mutter sheepish apologies in response.  
  
Steve is watching him, when Bucky looks back. “What?” he asks, self-consciously.  
  
“You’ve really never done anything like this.”  
  
“Did you think I was lying?”  
  
“No.” Steve shakes his head. His tongue comes out to wet his lips. Bucky tracks the movement of it with his eyes. “I only … can’t really imagine it. Being caged, the way you were. You’d have every reason to be angry, all the time, if you wanted.”  
  
“I think I was angry all the time,” Bucky says. He wishes he could reach across the table to hold Steve’s hand. “You remember how awful I was to you, in the beginning.”  
  
“You weren’t.” Steve shakes his head. “Or maybe you were, but I was awful first.”  
  
His eyes sparkle, as they always do, in the lamplight, and Bucky is struck with the sudden urge to kiss him. Before he can even really consider it, Wanda returns with two tankards on her tray, setting them down on their table in from of Steve and Bucky.  
  
“Will I get a dance tonight, or will you be preoccupied with your handsome friend?” she asks, speaking to Steve but sending a flirty wink in Bucky’s direction.  
  
“I always have time for you,” Steve returns, flirting back, but under the table his foot crosses the space between them and the toe of his shoe moves up the inside of Bucky’s calf.  
  
“I’ll be back for you later, then.” Yet another smile, and then she’s gone again, bustling off into the crowd. Around them, as the music becomes more boisterous, people are rising out of their chairs and beginning to dance.  
  
Bucky watches them, captivated by the way they move, because it’s nothing like what he’s used to. It isn’t slow and deliberate and respectful, it isn’t a carefully choreographed waltz with gentle music and averted gazes. It’s bouncy and jubilant, with loud laughter and stomping feet. Bucky wouldn’t know _how_ to dance that way. He wouldn’t know how to let himself be so uninhibited.  
  
When he turns his face back, Steve is watching him again, as if it’s just as thrilling for him to watch Bucky experience all these brand new things as it is for Bucky experiencing them.  
  
“They really don’t know who I am,” Bucky says, surprised at the wonder he feels in the realization.  
  
“No, they don’t,” Steve agrees. “I warn you, it’s a bit intoxicating. The first time I sat in a tavern and realized I could be completely anonymous if I just called myself Steve and didn’t offer any details about my life … it felt like …”  
  
“Freedom,” Bucky finishes, and Steve nods emphatically.  
  
“Precisely.”  
  
They share another secret smile, an act Bucky has become used to over the last few months, but this one feels more meaningful than most.  
  
“Try it,” Steve says, pointing to the tankard in front of Bucky.  
  
Bucky picks it up, sniffing the frothy amber liquid, and then sips at it. It’s cold, and bitter and sweet all at once, and he likes it. “This is ale?”  
  
“It is. You’ve never …?”  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “My father would never allow it. It’s a commoners’ drink.”  
  
“Has he ever had a moment of fun in his life?”  
  
“I doubt it,” Bucky snorts.  
  
“I pity him.”  
  
Nodding slowly, Bucky agrees. He’s never thought about it quite like that. “As do I.”  
  
“You don’t have to be like him.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Steve’s shoe taps against Bucky’s leg again, hidden in the shadows below their table.  
  
A short time later, Wanda returns, boldly holding out her hand to Steve and tugging him up from his chair when he takes it. She leads him away and he grins at Bucky over his shoulder before taking her waist and spinning her around. Bucky watches as they dance, Wanda’s long hair flying around her shoulders and Steve flushed and smiling, blond strands falling over his face, his half-unbuttoned shirt revealing the top of his chest. So carefree, in this moment. So far away from the boy Bucky knows is burdened by so many things. He’s stunning, he’s a work of art. Bucky couldn’t look away if he tried.  
  
As the song ends and a new one begins, a bleary-eyed woman of maybe 40 approaches Bucky and announces loudly in slurred words that he’s going to dance with her. Before Bucky can splutter through an answer, she’s hauling him to his feet and dragging him off toward the dancefloor. He’s encased in arms stronger than his own and he’s dancing before he even knows it, laughing in shock and disbelief and maybe, just maybe, something like joy.  
  
He loses complete track of time, of how many women he dances with, of how often he laughs until his stomach hurts. Steve brushes up against him more than once, so it isn’t an accident that he does it. The heat of his back against Bucky’s is comforting and familiar but exhilarating at the same time. By the time the barkeep shuts the tavern down and sends everyone home, it’s raining gently in the darkness outside, and Bucky laughs for what must be the thousandth time of the evening as he and Steve dart around the side of the building to retrieve their patient horses. They hurry along the cobblestone streets and fly back across the lawn, with cold raindrops pelting them as the drizzle increases to a downpour and soaks them through their clothes.  
  
In the stables, after returning their horses, Steve grabs Bucky around the waist and presses him up against the wooden wall, surging into a kiss that leaves Bucky lightheaded. Then, with a wicked grin, Steve takes Bucky’s hand and pulls him back out into the rain, jogging with him back up the path to the rope still hanging from Steve’s open window. They climb back up, Bucky slipping a few times because his hands are wet but managing not to fall. Bucky tumbles in through the window, skidding on the floor in his soaked shoes, and Steve follows right behind him, the water turning his hair dark and rivulets of it running down over his face.  
  
His expression is wild, pink-cheeked and open-mouthed, and he lunges forward to pull Bucky ferociously back into his arms for another bruising kiss. Bucky melts into it, turning to liquid against Steve’s body, just for a moment before he comes back to himself.  
  
“Wait,” he says, patting Steve’s chest and giggling, “wait, hold on. Let’s get these wet clothes off before we catch our deaths.”  
  
“Trying to get me naked, are you?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow. He’s still pressed in so close, and Bucky _yearns_ for him, for more than they’ve done so far, for every inch of Steve he’s willing to give.  
  
“Yes,” he answers, in a brave whisper and with a smile. “But also, I don’t want you to catch a chill and be bedridden for a week.”  
  
Steve ducks down and slides his warm lips along Bucky’s neck. His hands grip the back of Bucky’s shirt, squeezing water droplets from the fabric that trickle down Bucky’s back and make him shiver. Or maybe it’s the low rumble of Steve’s voice as he says, “you could be bedridden with me.”  
  
Bucky laughs again, but then gently pushes Steve away and begins to unbutton his shirt. He turns away, suddenly shy even though his bare chest is nothing Steve hasn’t already seen. When he looks back, Steve is fully nude, and Bucky blushes, but can’t look away. He’s enchanting. Miles of porcelain skin marred only by the black of his tattoos. The gentle bulge of muscles, his stomach tapered down to dark curls between his legs and the growing hardness beneath it. Bucky’s mouth runs dry and then fills with saliva. He wants so many things, things he doesn’t know the words for, things he isn’t sure he’s allowed to want but he wants them just the same.  
  
“Your turn,” Steve says, unembarrassed unlike Bucky, stepping towards him and nodding at Bucky’s still-clothed lower half.  
  
Bucky swallows nervously, and Steve steps in closer still, and slides his arms around Bucky’s waist. The kiss he presses to Bucky’s lips is warm and understanding. It lingers for the longest time before Steve tilts his head to deepen it, tongue sliding slow and lazy into Bucky’s mouth and swirling around his own. Bucky feels it deep into his gut, his own body warming and hardening in his slacks. Steve brushes against that with his thigh, rubbing him maddeningly until Bucky is breathless. The sensation sends sparks of arousal all over his body.  
  
“Thank you, for tonight.”  
  
“Of course.” Steve kisses along his cheek. His lips leave moist trails behind them.  
  
“That was the most fun I’ve ever had,” Bucky confesses to him, “I think in my whole life.”  
  
“Then we’ll do it again.” Steve’s hand cups his face, his thumb rubs along Bucky’s cheekbone. His other hand trails down Bucky’s chest to the waistband of his pants where the buttons are. “Can I? Please say no, if you don’t want me to.”  
  
“I do want you to. I want you so much.” Bucky smiles shyly at him but means what he said. Lingering nerves still flutter like bumblebees in his stomach, but something much stronger overtakes them. Arousal, excitement. The dizzying anticipation that something wonderful is about to happen, something Bucky will never forget for as long as he lives.  
  
Steve unbuttons his slacks and helps Bucky out of them, and his shorts and socks, until they’re standing bare before each other, taking each other in with hungry eyes. Bucky isn’t cold at all, anymore. The heat from the fire, and from Steve’s gaze, is more than enough to melt the goosebumps away from his skin. Steve walks backwards in careful steps, guiding Bucky with him so their lips don’t have to part as they make their way to the bed. Their erections bump as they move together and Bucky inhales sharply through his nose at the feeling, the thrill of it. Steve chuckles deeply against his mouth and pulls him down until they’re horizontal, draped over each other on fine linens and soft down cushions.  
  
They kiss for ages, for so long that Bucky’s lips go numb and he can’t remember a time when he didn’t have Steve’s tongue in his mouth. Then Steve stops and hovers above him, propped up on one elbow with the line of his body pressed along Bucky’s side. Steve gazes at him, and there’s something important in his eyes, something Bucky doesn’t want to name for fear he might be imagining it. A feeling he might just return, even though neither have been brave enough to say it.  
  
Steve touches him reverently, sliding fingertips along Bucky’s cheek, the pad of his thumb over Bucky’s bottom lip, still damp from the kiss Steve left on it. “You’re so beautiful,” Steve murmurs.  
  
“Steve,” Bucky whispers, stomach swooping and face flushing.  
  
Steve shakes his head in seeming disbelief, wonder taking over his features as he looks down the line of Bucky’s body, takes in his trembling stomach and the erection laying red and needy against his thigh. Steve’s hand follows, curling around Bucky’s stiffened flesh and squeezing. A pearl of moisture leaks from the tip and Bucky gasps again as pleasure tendrils curl in his gut.  
  
“Would you want … more?” Steve asks, eyes still trained toward Bucky’s lower half, hand starting to stroke slowly.  
  
“Yes,” he says immediately. Always, he always wants more. Even when he’s too naïve to know what that entails, he trusts Steve and he longs for it.  
  
Steve turns back to him, leaning down and brushing his nose against Bucky’s once, twice, before stealing another slow kiss. “Would you put this in me?” he asks softly, eyes closed and forehead pressed to Bucky’s. They’re as close as they could be, skin touching from their foreheads all the way down to their ankles.  
  
Bucky’s stomach swoops again. “Doesn’t it hurt?”  
  
Steve shakes his head. “Not if you do it properly.”  
  
“I wouldn’t know how to do it properly.”  
  
“I’ll show you.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
To Bucky’s surprise, Steve’s warmth is suddenly gone and he’s getting up, crossing the room toward a desk in the far corner. Bucky sits up and frowns, thinking he’s done something wrong, until Steve opens a drawer and pulls something from it and turns back to him. Seeing Bucky’s face has Steve shaking his head and hurrying back, sitting next to him and revealing a small glass bottle in his palm.  
  
“We need something. Something to slick things up a little,” Steve tells him.  
  
Bucky is confused.   
  
“Because, I don’t …” Steve’s cheeks redden just slightly – if Bucky weren’t so close to him, he wouldn’t have noticed, but he does, and is unfamiliar with seeing Steve doubt himself. Usually he’s the confident one, and Bucky is the one trailing behind him like a lost lamb. “Skin on skin doesn’t go so easy if it’s dry. Girls have their own way to ease the friction. We don’t.”  
  
“Oh.” Bucky’s face heats as well, and shame prickles along the back of his neck. He puts his face into his hands. “I’m sorry I’m not better at this.”  
  
“Why should you be, when you haven’t done it before?”  
  
It sounds perfectly reasonable in Steve's calming voice but it does little to make Bucky feel less young and foolish.   
  
“Bucky,” Steve whispers. He moves closer, his fingers going into Bucky’s hair and petting gently. His lips brush against Bucky’s temple.  
  
Bucky breathes deeply and looks back up at him. Steve is so understanding, always so patient and – Bucky hardly dares think the word – _loving_ , and Bucky’s nerves are soothed by the look on his kind face. He nods, and holds his hand out. “Tell me what to do.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Steve worries. “We don’t have to.”  
  
“I am,” Bucky tells him, and he is sure. He’s never been so sure of anything. “I want to, I want everything with you. I want …”  
  
“Tell me,” Steve presses gently, his fingers still playing in Bucky’s hair.  
  
Bucky turns his face into Steve’s palm, kissing the heel of it. “Want to belong to you.”  
  
Steve’s eyes close briefly, and they’re shiny when he opens them again. “I want that, too. I don’t think I’ve ever really belonged anywhere.”  
  
“Be mine, then.”  
  
Steve tilts forward to kiss him, climbing over him as he does and pulling Bucky on top of him. Bucky rolls his hips down as their tongues dance around each other, passionate and resplendent, and Steve’s arms wrap around his back to keep him close. “One finger, at first,” Steve says to him, the words slurred into a messy kiss. He doesn’t sound embarrassed anymore. He sounds like he’s aching for it as much as Bucky is. “Then two, maybe three.”  
  
“You’ll tell me, if I’m doing it wrong?” Bucky asks, to a reassuring nod from Steve.  
  
“Get up,” Steve says, patting Bucky’s hip.  
  
Bucky climbs off him and sits back on his heels, watching Steve’s body as he turns himself over and ends up on his hands and knees with his backside close to Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky takes another deep breath. In through his nose, out through his mouth. Far too many emotions to make sense of dance in his stomach, and his hands shake as he reaches out and rubs his palm up Steve’s spine. It bends under his touch, arching down so Steve’s hips tilt further up into the air, and Steve smiles at him over his shoulder.  
  
“Having second thoughts?” he asks, teasing, but also really checking.  
  
“Never,” Bucky promises, more serious about it than Steve is, and he leans in to kiss the fleshy cheek of Steve’s ass. He loves the way Steve’s skin tastes.  
  
He rises up off his heels and walks on his knees until he’s squarely behind Steve, and then uses his hands to spread the cheeks apart so he can see. The furl of muscle is pink, with lighter, more golden hairs surrounding it, fanned out as if an artist had lovingly painted them that way. Bucky is struck with the sudden urge to engage in all kinds of things he’s never considered before, and he has to swallow over the lump that grows in his throat.  
  
Steve makes a quiet, impatient sound, and Bucky leans in to press a kiss to his tailbone and shushes him. He takes the glass bottle and uncorks it, pouring slippery oil over his fingers and spreading it around. Just to be safe, even though he doesn’t have any idea whether it’s necessary, he smears some over Steve’s hole as well, and delights in the feel of it under his fingertips and in the tiny hitch of Steve’s breath. His heard is going so fast in his chest, and his cock throbs between his legs.  
  
“Ready?” Bucky asks, continuing to move his finger in a circle. The muscle twitches under his fingers, and he watches, enraptured by it.  
  
“Yes,” Steve breathes. “I’ve wanted it for months.”  
  
“Did you … with anyone else? Since you’ve been here?” Bucky asks. As he does, he pushes his finger forward until just the tip is engulfed in Steve’s body. It’s warm inside, and snug, and Bucky’s stomach turns over itself for the dozenth time tonight at the idea of getting more than his fingers in there. He can’t imagine how it would fit, it’s so small. “I’m not angry, if you have, only wondering.”  
  
“No.” Steve’s hips move, rocking back and forcing Bucky’s finger in further, to the second knuckle. “I wanted to, at first, just to make my father even angrier. But I never met anyone. And then I got to know you.”  
  
“I’m so happy you did.” Bucky lays another kiss to the base of his spine, his free hand stroking down Steve’s soft thigh. Secretly, he is happy to hear Steve hasn’t been with another. Perhaps it’s unfair, but he wants Steve all to himself.  
  
“More,” Steve urges, in a rough voice. “You don’t need to be so careful.”  
  
“It feels nice?” Bucky sort of can’t imagine how it would, but he’s desperately curious.  
  
“You have no idea,” Steve says, with a chuckle, dropping his head down to hang between his shoulders as Bucky slides his finger in until it disappears completely and wiggles it around, getting a feel for it.  
  
“Would you show me, one day?”  
  
“Whenever you want.”  
  
Bucky swallows again. At Steve’s urging he slowly pulls his finger back out and slides back in with two. It’s much tighter, and takes a moment longer to work them in, but Steve is panting by the time he does, and pushing back against him, and Bucky’s head is spinning.  
  
“There’s a spot,” Steve tells him, with a shuddering sigh, “bend your fingers, like you’re using them to tell someone to come closer.”  
  
Frowning, Bucky does as he asked, and a moment later Steve’s body tightens and he moans loudly and then laughs.  
  
“Right there.”  
  
“What is it?” Bucky whispers, watching with wide eyes as he rubs over it, deep inside Steve’s body. The outer rim of the hole twitches around Bucky’s fingers and he swears softly under his breath.  
  
“No idea,” Steve says, with more breathless laughter, “but it feels so good.”  
  
“Good enough to …?”  
  
“Mmhm,” Steve hums, “if you keep rubbing it like that. Not this time, though. I want you to fuck me.”  
  
Bucky shivers and an undignified squeak manages to slip past his lips, and he drops his head down, resting his cheek on Steve’s back. “How am I supposed to cope, when you say things like that? Now?” he asks, voice wavering over the word.  
  
“Now,” Steve agrees. “Move your hand, I want to turn over. So I can see you.”  
  
Bucky does, carefully sliding his fingers out, and watching as Steve rolls onto his back. He looks so lovely like this, cheeks and chest flushed to pink, sweat dappled along his forehead, damp blond strands clinging to the skin. His cock is flushed as well, and it’s leaking, leaving smears of fluid along his stomach that Bucky wants to lick up.  
  
Steve sits up, bracketing Bucky’s body with his legs. Their eyes lock as Steve reaches blindly out to the side and finds the oil, drizzling it over Bucky’s aching erection and stroking him, slicking him up. Bucky can barely breathe for how good it feels to be touched like this. With his other hand Steve cups his cheek and guides him into a kiss that is much too soft for the heaviness of the moment, but at the same time, is perfect. It’s how they’ve always been. Steve’s always treated him like he’s precious.  
  
“Ready?” Steve whispers.  
  
Bucky nods. “You’ll tell me, if – ”  
  
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Steve interrupts. “I told you, I like it. You’ll like it too, I promise.”  
  
“I know.” Bucky kisses the corner of his mouth and puts his clean hand to the small of Steve’s back, helping him lay back down against the cushions. Steve smiles up at him, reaching up to brush Bucky’s hair out of his eyes, as Bucky leans forward onto his hand and uses his other to guide his cock into the entrance to Steve’s body.  
  
It yields around him, tight but letting him in, and Bucky isn’t prepared for the way it feels. It steals the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his brain. He’s never been prepared for anything where Steve is concerned, it’s all been brand new and surprising and utterly life-changing. Bucky’s ruined, now, for anything else. He can never go back.  
  
“Oh,” he exhales, and Steve chuckles, wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and kisses him.  
  
“Yeah,” Steve murmurs into his lips. “Me too.”  
  
Bucky keeps his eyes closed and soaks in the sensations. It doesn’t last as long as he thinks it should, once he lowers himself down to rest against Steve and begins to thrust his hips. It’s too warm, too snug, too overwhelming having Steve wrapped around him and Steve’s arms over his shoulders and Steve’s lips on his neck. Steve makes the most beautiful little sounds, soft gasps and moans, and Bucky can’t remember anything that isn’t this feeling. It’s over far too fast, and Steve holds him and laughs happily with him, and then Bucky pulls gently out of him and shuffles down the bed to take Steve’s cock into his mouth and suck him until he’s finished as well.  
  
Bucky doesn’t know how it usually goes, when people do this for the first time on their wedding night. He knows it’s not usually like this. It’s perfect, anyway. Steve pulls him back up as soon as he catches his breath, wanting to be close, and Bucky goes willingly, happily.  
  
“Now I know for sure this was the best day of my life,” Bucky says. He relaxes into Steve’s embrace, surrounded by him, his head pillowed comfortably on Steve’s chest as Steve draws patterns with his fingers on Bucky’s back. He’s often done that. One day, Bucky will ask him what he’s drawing.  
  
“Mine too.”  
  
“Really? After all the exciting things you’ve done?”  
  
Steve rolls them, so Bucky ends up on his back and Steve on his side pressed against him, the way they were when they first laid down. His eyes are intense and swimming as he looks down at Bucky, touching his face, pressing a lingering kiss to his forehead.  
  
“I think,” Steve murmurs to him, “you are the most beautiful thing I have ever touched.”  
  
* * *


	17. Edelweiss (Courage)

In June, the heat returns. It rolls in like waves of mist off the mountains, in thick, endless cascades. The castle becomes unbearably stuffy in the heat of the afternoon, especially on days where the breeze is nonexistent and every window thrown open – hundreds of them – seems not to make the slightest difference. Bucky takes to sleeping naked on top of his bedsheets, often with bowls of ice placed on the windowsill, hoping to catch a whiff of incoming air that could be cooled even slightly before it reaches his sticky skin.  
  
Nights he spends with Steve are warm and sticky for other reasons, in addition to the weather. Bucky isn’t sure, when he thinks about it, how he ever managed to survive without the magic they can make together. Steve shows him everything. Kind and patient but capable of making Bucky’s stomach drop with just the raise of an eyebrow, with his wicked mouth and his sure hands, guiding Bucky through all the ways they can make each other shake and sweat and come apart at the seams. Bucky finds religion in it, in kissing Steve everywhere, in discovering which things he likes the best, which ways he likes to be touched. Steve loses the ability to speak when Bucky slides into him in certain positions, his erection pressing insistently against that spot inside Steve taught him how to find.  
  
The first time Bucky is the one on that end of things, Steve takes it all agonizingly slow, opening Bucky up with the warm, intoxicating press of his fingers, building sluggishly to three until Bucky’s lost his mind with the languished build of it. The spot inside is better than anything he’s ever felt, when Steve massages it as his lips kiss underneath Bucky’s ear and his rough gravel voice whispers to him. Something like being set on fire, Bucky thinks, only excruciating in the most thought-endingly pleasurable way. Steve never stops kissing or talking to him as he slides himself into Bucky’s body, in shallow, careful thrusts of his hips. It stings, and then it mellows into an intense burn, too full and too overwhelming, and then it melts further into something just _wonderful_. Consumed by Steve, intertwined into one being. Bucky’s never really fit anywhere before, but he fits so perfectly with Steve.  
  
“Are you alright?” Steve asks him, care and concern on his face, when he notices Bucky’s eyes are wet.  
  
Bucky nods. He flounders, searches for the right words and comes up empty. “I just …”  
  
But he doesn’t need them, Steve understands without them, as he always does. “I know,” he murmurs, kissing the salt off Bucky’s cheeks and holding him close, tight. Safe and adored. Belonging.  
  
* * *  
  
After three days of rain, a torrential, disastrous sort of downpour that endlessly descends from the heavens, the clouds finally part and the sun returns to dry the puddles left in the fields. Bucky’s in his rooms, with Natasha helping him try out a new pair of riding boots and marking down alterations for the cobbler in the village, when they’re both startled nearly out of their skin by a loud, insistent banging at Bucky’s door.  
  
Natasha leaps to her feet and hurries to answer it, but before she even reaches the handle, Steve’s valet’s voice calls out, “dress if you aren’t, we’re going riding!”  
  
Bucky’s maid sends a smirk at him over her shoulder, before pulling the door open.  
  
Sam and Steve are on the other side of it, in their riding clothes, with hats tucked under their arms. The grins on both of their faces fall away when they notice Natasha.  
  
“Oh, apologies, Ma’am,” Sam says quickly, while Steve presses his lips together and tries not to laugh.  
  
Bucky does laugh, because it’s his maid and his room and because he finds these things amusing, after so many months with Steve, rather than mortifying as he would have last year.  
  
“Do you never get in trouble, with your housemaster?” Bucky asks him, with a grin.  
  
Sam shrugs one shoulder. “Sometimes.”  
  
“The housemaster can’t sack him, he’s my valet,” Steve points out.  
  
“Which he despises,” Sam adds, and Steve nods.  
  
“How fortunate for you,” Natasha says, barely-veiled sarcasm dripping in her voice, and Bucky stifles a laugh this time. She moves back towards Bucky, waiting as he pulls off the boots he’d been trying and hands them to her. With a neutral expression, she tells him, “if I ever failed to perform my duties, I should deserve to be sacked.”  
  
“You never would,” Bucky tells her, sincerely, and one corner of her mouth curves up into just a hint of a smile before she takes her leave. “Riding?” he asks Sam and Steve, after she’s gone.  
  
“Monsoon season appears to have been temporarily suspended,” Sam jokes, “we should sneak a ride in before it returns.”  
  
“We don’t have monsoons here,” Bucky replies, but he laughs when they do. “It’s barely stopped, though. The entire area will still be soaked.”  
  
“Is His Majesty afraid of a little mud?” Steve asks, smirking at him, and winking, as well, because Sam won’t have been able to catch that from where he’s standing next to Steve.  
  
“No, His Majesty is not,” Bucky returns, playfully sticking his tongue out.  
  
He’s right, about the puddles and the saturated ground and the mud that’s slick down the stone path toward the stables. Sam slips in it, nearly falling to his backside on the ground but Steve catches him at the last second and hauls him, all three of them laughing, back to his feet. It’s the only near-fall, but their boots are already caked in mud by the time they reach the bottom of the hill.  
  
Thor, hearing them coming because none can seem to stop chuckling, emerges from his cabin only half dressed and with a big smile on his face. “Have you lost your minds?” he calls to them, booming voice echoing through the stillness around them.  
  
Bucky considers for a moment how stiff and formal Thor was with him only months ago, and how far they’ve all come. It widens the smile on his face. “They dragged me away from a fitting! Apparently we’re going riding, and I didn’t get a say in it.”  
  
“No, you don’t,” Steve confirms.  
  
In the minutes it takes for Thor to ready himself, the rest of them head for the stables for their horses, Steve and Bucky saddling their own as if they’re anyone else in this world, no better or worse than Sam or Thor. Just people.  
  
The wet ground sloshes beneath hooves as they take off and fly along the path toward the forest. Water and dirt sprays up in their wake, soaking Bucky’s pants, leaving spots of mud on his face, and the joy that fills him as they speed through the trees expands until there isn’t room for anything else. No anxieties, no worries for the future, only happiness.  
  
They’re already a mess by the time they reach their favorite meadow by the creek, so no one gives a second thought to climbing down off their horses and flopping into the damp grass. They’ll have to slip quietly back into the castle through a servants’ entrance, the King would still raise hell if they tracked mud all over the front entrance or into the Persian rugs in the hallways. It’s still a bit of a thrill, to be breaking all the rules right under his father’s nose, with the risk of getting caught ever looming but with each passing week Bucky finds he cares less and less about it.  
  
“Sit still!” Sam gripes, as he pokes the stems of dandelions into Thor’s long hair and tries to weave them so they’ll stay.  
  
Thor’s shoulders shake in barely controlled laughter, but he obeys and tries not to move.  
  
Bucky looks at Steve, and Steve is smiling at him, warm and fond with sunlight glimmering in his turquoise eyes. It hits Bucky in the chest as it always does, to be gazed upon like that. He expected all his life to be married off, to be put out of the way, to be friendly enough with whoever she was to make a life together, but he never expected to be cherished the way Steve seems to cherish him. Some days it’s overwhelming. Most days it’s wonderful.  
  
“Can you two stop making eyes at each other and help me?” Sam asks.  
  
Bucky blinks, the words finding his ears but taking his brain several heartbeats too long to work out exactly what they mean. Once his mind catches up, it sends a child down his spine, and Steve, still looking at him, alters his smile from fond to apologetic. Bucky’s head whips around to look at Sam and Thor, with his heart beating momentarily into his throat. Sam is still concentrating on his task, but Thor meets Bucky’s eyes and nods slowly. He knows. They both do.  
  
“You …” Bucky begins, the words caught on his tongue like a fly in a trap.  
  
“Yes,” Sam answers, still not looking up. He finds a longer-stemmed daisy, and ties it in a knot around a lock of blonde near Thor’s ear.  
  
“I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject,” Steve’s voice says, behind him. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Bucky looks between them, and then back in the direction of their friends, he asks, “you don’t …?”  
  
Thor shakes his head. “Not if you’re happy.”  
  
Unsure of what to make of that, Bucky just sits in his disbelief as Steve gets up and walks over. He leans down, kissing Bucky’s forehead as he passes, in full view of the other two. And then he carries on, kneeling in the grass on Thor’s other side and examining Sam’s work.  
  
Bucky watches them, easy banter and teasing and laughs between them as they decorate Thor’s mane of hair. His anxiety fades smoothly away, as he does, like being frozen to the bone and sinking into a warm bath. It sinks down to his marrow, relaxing him and soothing nerves he hadn’t known were there, until they were gone. Sam finally looks up at him, and winks. Bucky smiles back and doesn’t have to force it at all.  
  
* * *  
  
Steve moans above him, dropping his head down so their mouths can collide in a rough, bruising kiss as he pushes his hips forward a few more times and then shivers through an orgasm. Bucky holds him tight as he comes down from it, his own head spinning and limbs weighty and skin buzzing like there are spiders underneath it. Steve breathes heavily against his neck, sweat and Bucky’s release sticky between them. They’d managed to re-enter the castle undetected, and Steve drew them a bath in his rooms so they could rid themselves of the mud from their afternoon. He’d kissed Bucky surrounded by warm, soapy water, and it had been more difficult than ever to hide their satisfied smiles over dinner with Bucky’s family, before Steve had dragged Bucky right back here so he could pull off his formal clothes and make a mess of him again.  
  
Another shiver wracks through him, and Bucky cups the back of his head, his fingers tangling in soft golden hair. Steve exhales, and lifts his hips just enough so he can slip out of Bucky’s body, but he doesn’t move further away. He stays, draped over Bucky, smothering him. All at once, it feels less like holding each other in the aftermath, and more like something darker, like Steve won’t lift his face from where it’s tucked into Bucky’s neck because he can’t bring himself to face the world beyond it.  
  
“Steve,” Bucky whispers.  
  
Steve sniffs, and his shoulders tremble, and Bucky panics. He’s done something wrong, he’s wrecked it, after such a lovely day together, he hurt Steve even though he promised himself he never would, even though he _loves_ Steve –   
  
“No,” Steve says quickly, in a voice thick with tears, sensing the dark places Bucky’s mind is going. “No, it’s not you.”  
  
“Then what?” Bucky nudges Steve’s cheek with his nose and rubs his back.  
  
“I don’t want to be King,” Steve breathes, staying wrapped in Bucky’s arms, sadness overtaking him.  
  
“Oh.” It sinks like a rock in Bucky’s stomach, even though it isn’t a surprise. It isn’t a surprise at all. He’s known that since the week Steve arrived. Steve has just never said it aloud before. “I … I know. I know you don’t.”  
  
“I’ll be so terrible at it.” He sniffs again, and huffs a laugh, but it’s humorless and heartbreaking. “I always ruin everything, I always … my people deserve so much better, than someone like me.”  
  
“You don’t ruin everything,” Bucky argues. Tears prickle at his own eyes and he blinks in a vain attempt to keep them at bay. He pushes his nose into Steve’s hair and inhales him. “You didn’t ruin me, this. You gave me everything I never knew I was missing.”  
  
“But it can’t last, can it?” Steve exhales. He kisses Bucky’s neck and stays hiding there. “I never wanted to rule anyone, I just want to be with you. But we can’t. Not forever. Not here.”  
  
Bucky shuts his eyes as the tears do spill over. “I know,” he says again, miserably this time. One brief moment of joy and ecstasy and then reality crashed down around them, and Bucky feels like he might die if he ever lets go of Steve.  
  
“Run away with me?” Steve asks, in the smallest voice, the barest of whispers.  
  
Bucky squeezes his molars together to keep from sobbing. “Where would we go, if we did?”  
  
“Wherever you want. To the end of the world.”  
  
Inhaling shakily, Bucky nudges his face again, and this time Steve looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes and tear-tracks on his cheeks. Bucky kisses him soundly and doesn’t answer.  
  
* * *  
  
In the morning, Bucky finds his father in his study. As always, the thick velvet drapes are closed. Bucky has never understood why the King prefers dim, flickering candlelight to clear sunlight, but he does. The familiar smell of the wood and the books hits him, and in his mind takes him back to a lifetime of being called into this room to be sternly reprimanded or informed he’s been a disappointment somehow. It’s been his least favorite room in the castle since before he can remember. He would rather spend a night in the graveyard surrounding the church, than in here. This might be the first time in his entire life that he’s come here voluntarily.  
  
The King is at his desk, quill scratching along parchment, and makes a point out of not looking up when Bucky enters. He doesn’t like to be disturbed. He forces Bucky to clear his throat, and then finally his father looks up at him, with wide eyes under a creased brow.  
  
“Yes?” he asks dryly.  
  
“Could I ask you a question?” Bucky’s throat feels parched, suddenly, like it’s been weeks since he’s had anything to drink. He curls his toes inside his shoes and wills his knees not to wobble, standing tall with his hands folded behind his back so their shaking won’t be visible.  
  
“If you must.”  
  
“Did you ever doubt that you would be a decent king?” he asks, before he can lose his nerve, even though he feels it fading with every word.  
  
As predicted, the King’s gaze hardens. His eyes narrow, colder than ice suddenly and boring into Bucky like a nail into wood. “I beg your pardon?”  
  
“I don’t mean to say that you aren’t one,” Bucky hastily elaborates. “I’m only curious whether you ever had worried about becoming what everyone expected of you.”  
  
“Everyone expected me to be a ruler.” The King sets his quill down on the desk beside him, and his thin fingers lace together next to it. “To take over these sacred duties from my father, and his father before him, and continue on the path that they set. No one expects that of you, James.”  
  
“I know. Yes, of course I know. I’m simply asking if you ever doubted … anything.” It feels, oddly, like he’s begging his father to admit to being human. “Anything at all, any moment of questioning. Before Peggy was born, for instance. Did you worry that you might not be a good father?”  
  
The King looks as if he sincerely does not understand the question. “You and your sisters had the most blessed childhoods of anyone in the kingdom. You had nannies and instructors. You always had food in your bellies, you had vast rooms and acres of grounds on which to roam. Children in the village would happily saw off a limb to have had your upbringing.”   
  
Bucky exhales through his nose and closes his eyes for a moment. “I am not ungrateful. I promise I’m not. I just … you never doubted? Even once? You never thought, even just for a moment, that everything might not turn out the way it was meant to?”  
  
“I was born to be King. A king does not doubt.”  
  
“And what does he do if he does?”   
  
“Then God have mercy on his people.”  
  
* * *


	18. Willow (Sorrow)

The glasshouse is bursting with blooms. A vibrant rainbow assortment of them, reds and pinks among massive leaves, yellow hibiscus that begin as tightly packed cones and then slowly unfurl, orchids in fuchsia and lavender with roaming veiny patterns along their showy, delicate petals. The air inside is even thicker than usual, as the sun overhead pours in through the transparent walls and floods the space with heat so dense Bucky can hardly draw it into his lungs without choking on it. But it wraps him, warms him like a blanket, like when he wakes at first light and Steve is behind him with an arm resting heavy over Bucky’s midsection. Soothed and protected.  
  
Steve is a few yards behind him, staring up at a bunch of bright green bananas hanging from a tree. He’s just gazing at them, as if transfixed even though they aren’t moving or putting on any kind of show. His eyes are wide and his pink lips are parted. Bucky’s heart feels like it swells in his chest, and then it’s difficult to draw in a deep enough breath for a reason unrelated to the humidity.  
  
“We can eat them, when they’re ripe. Once they turn yellow.”  
  
“I’ve heard of them,” Steve says, still looking in wonder at the fruit. “I’ve never seen one before. I never knew they grew on a tree this tall.”  
  
“They’re delicious.”  
  
“Where are they from?”  
  
“India, I think.”  
  
“Who brought them to you?”  
  
“I’m not sure. That tree has been there since before I was born.”  
  
Steve finally tears his eyes away and they meet Bucky’s, and he smiles. Were they alone, Bucky would happily skip over and pull Steve into his arms and kiss him. It’s no matter; they’ve done that plenty already, even though it’s barely noon. Bucky’s slept in Steve’s bed every night this week, and they’ve been twice more to the tavern in the village. He figures by now, Natasha must know he’s sneaking out. She’s far too clever, to be fooled by his half-hearted attempts at mussing up the bedsheets in the morning so it looks like he slept in his own room. She hasn’t said anything, and he trusts that she wouldn’t.  
  
“This place is … magical,” Steve says, and there’s more pressure in Bucky’s chest. It’s his favorite place in the world, other than maybe Steve’s arms, and it means more to him than he’s ever said that Steve likes it too.  
  
“I was so mad at you, the first time I brought you here,” Bucky remembers. “When we fought.”  
  
Steve’s mouth curves into a smile and he laughs softly, shaking his head. “I was, too. I thought you were such a … I don’t know. But I was wrong.”  
  
“Such a what?” Bucky presses, grinning when Steve shrugs. “Alright, I’ll go first. I thought you were an arrogant prick.”  
  
Steve laughs louder at that, a joyous bark of it with his head tossed back. His hair falls over his forehead when he looks back at Bucky. “Perhaps I was.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Bucky agrees, with a grin.  
  
“I suppose I thought you were … small-minded. Maybe a bit pompous.”  
  
“I was,” Bucky says, readily, no need whatsoever to deny it. He was both, and so many other things. He would barely recognize himself anymore, if he could go back and meet that version of himself.  
  
Steve steps closer to him, but then remembers where they are, and the hand he’d lifted to hold out falls back against his side. He just keeps smiling instead.  
  
“I thought your tattoo was revolting.”  
  
“Well, it was, back then,” Steve laughs. “It was infected.”  
  
“You showed me and I thought I was going to vomit.”  
  
With a louder laugh, and a gorgeous twinkle in his eye, Steve asks, “what about now?”  
  
“If we were alone, I would run my tongue over it.”  
  
“Mm,” Steve hums, nodding and pressing his lips together, to hide the way his smile grows, but Bucky sees it all. “Not so revolting, then.”  
  
“Definitely not.”  
  
“We should get you one.”  
  
“Of what?”  
  
Across the glasshouse, a gardener sets a clipboard down on the edge of a table and exists through a side door, leaving them finally alone. Taking advantage of it, Steve steps in close to him and wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist. Bucky’s hands curl around the back of his neck, his fingers playing in soft hair.  
  
“What about my face, life-sized across your chest?” Steve suggests, and Bucky chuckles.  
  
“That sounds highly refined.”  
  
“No one would see it but me.”  
  
“Until Natasha drew me a bath. Or the doctor visits. Or until it gets infected like yours did and I end up on my deathbed with your face disfigured on my skin.”  
  
“Always such a pessimist,” Steve murmurs, catching Bucky’s lips in a kiss.  
  
* * *  
  
It’s raining again, when it happens. When Bucky looks back on that, it might seem fitting, that the world outside reflects the storm within. He finds Steve in the library, expecting him to be reading or pondering chess moves in the warm, cavernous space. Instead, Steve is in a chair near the window, with a piece of paper in his hand, head bowed as he stares down at it. He isn’t moving; he barely seems to be breathing.  
  
Bucky frowns. They’re alone, so he goes quickly over. Steve doesn’t look up, as he approaches, even though he must hear Bucky coming. His footsteps should be unmistakable in the silence around them.  
  
“Steve?” Bucky asks, uncertain, worried. He reaches out, brushes his fingers through Steve’s hair.  
  
When Steve finally looks up at him, his expression does nothing to quell any of the things running through Bucky’s wild imagination. It isn’t sad, or angry, or worried. It’s only blank. His mouth is a flat line and his eyes are glassy, devoid of any emotion Bucky could perceive or unpack. He holds the paper out for Bucky to take, and he does, leaving his other hand around the back of Steve’s neck as his eyes travel down to it to skim over the loopy handwriting.  
  
“Oh,” Bucky says softly, with what feels like a stone sinking deep in his stomach.  
  
“I knew it was coming,” Steve says in a quiet, detached voice.  
  
_I’m so heartbroken you were not here to say goodbye, my angel_ , the letter ends, just above Steve’s mother’s signature, _but know that he loved you very much, and will be looking down on you with pride as you return to take the throne._  
  
Next to her name, the ink is smudged. A teardrop, Bucky realizes. A lasting, physical sign of grief, from a woman having to write to her son to inform him that his father has died.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Bucky whispers. It feels so, so small. A single drop of water in an entire ocean. He just doesn’t know what else he could possibly say.  
  
Steve takes the letter back and folds it, along the existing creases and then a few more times so it’s small enough to tuck into a pocket inside his overshirt. He stares blankly into the air in front of his face, and Bucky’s insides seem to twist around themselves. He yearns to fix it, to be able to snap his fingers and make everything better, and he knows he can’t. It’s such a horribly helpless feeling. Like being tied down and watching a tragedy unfold in front of his eyes, unable to stop it.  
  
He kneels, shins resting on the stone floor, and takes Steve’s hand. Silently willing Steve to look at him, to shout, to weep, anything at all, but Steve doesn’t. His shoulders rise and fall in a deep, slow breath, and then he pulls his hand out of Bucky’s and stands.  
  
“Steve,” Bucky pleads, but Steve steps around him and walks away without a word.  
  
* * *  
  
Bucky cries, even though he never met Steve’s father, and even though Steve has rarely had a kind word to say about the man who sent him away. He cries, alone in his rooms, because he loves Steve with all his heart and Steve has lost something. He cries because Steve’s blank stare might be the most heartbreaking thing Bucky has ever seen. Far, far worse than if he had been inconsolable. He cries for himself, too. Because this is what they’ve been dreading all along. This is the very moment that has been scratching at the back of Bucky’s mind, burrowing into his skull like a termite, that he’s been trying to silence but never quite managing to do it. This is the moment Steve leaves, returns to his own kingdom, assumes his place on the throne, is assigned a queen if he refuses to pick one on his own, finds his spot on a line of destiny that’s always been larger than either of them.  
  
This is the moment they lose each other.  
  
A soft knock at his door precedes it creaking open and Peggy appearing behind it, in a forest green dress with matching ribbons braided into her chestnut hair. Her lips are red and her brown eyes are sad, and Bucky has to clench his teeth to keep from bursting into tears when he’d only just managed to slow them. She shuts the door behind her and joins him on the velvet sofa, sitting quietly beside him and reaching out for his hand so she can squeeze it in between both of hers.  
  
“Natasha told me. I’m so sad for him.”  
  
“Where is he?” Bucky asks, wiping his eyes, although there’s no point to it. She’ll be able to see he’s been crying, even in the absence of tears.  
  
“I don’t know,” Peggy answers. “My maid saw him leaving the castle, heading for the stables. He needed time alone, I suppose.”  
  
“I should go after him.”  
  
“You should leave him be,” Peggy argues, shaking her head. “At least for a while. Let him grieve in his own way.”  
  
Bucky nods. He stares down at their hands. There may come a time when he loses her, too. He won’t be allowed to stay here indefinitely, even though he’s never known another home. Steve will leave, and Bucky will be sent away, and he’ll be nothing but a footnote in the story of this place, when it’s told in the history books. The forgotten youngest, the one who was only ever in the way, the one who will leave no legacy. It would be all too easy, to pack his possessions and hang new curtains over his windows and erase him completely. It wouldn’t take even a day.  
  
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” Peggy asks.  
  
Bucky’s too miserable to even be shocked. He just nods, numbly.  
  
“Oh, my dear,” Peggy sighs. She squeezes his hand again, her long fingers moving over his wrist. The sympathy in her voice slices into Bucky like a knife.  
  
“It’s such a disaster,” Bucky says. More tears do fall, slipping over his lashes and trailing down his cheeks.  
  
“Does he love you?”  
  
“I’m not sure,” Bucky admits. He sniffs, and his shoulders shudder as he exhales. “He kisses me. Tells me I’m beautiful. Holds me in his arms.”  
  
“That sounds a lot like love.”  
  
He squeezes his teeth together, and nods. His heart would soar, to hear Steve say the words aloud. And then his heart would break into a million fragile shards. Because they can’t have it forever. For all Bucky knows, plans are already in place for Steve to make his departure. For all he knows, it could be as soon as tomorrow. Steve could be gone from his life forever before Bucky can even managed to process the idea of it.  
  
“What do I do?”  
  
“I don’t have any idea. It can never be. Not here, not with who you both are.”  
  
“I don’t care about who I am. What does it matter, what’s the point of any of it? I’ll never rule anything, what good is a crown if I’m just as trapped as everybody else?”  
  
“But he will,” Peggy says gently, and Bucky doesn’t need the reminder.  
  
“I know. He’s going to leave, now. I’m never going to see him again. How do you keep living, if half of your heart is across the world?”  
  
“I wish I knew.” Peggy moves in closer to him, so she can put her arm around his shoulders, and Bucky falls against her, staining the bodice of her dress with his tears.  
  
* * *  
  
Thor doesn’t ask, an hour later when Bucky turns up in riding boots and a thick cloak with a hood to protect from the rain. It’s slowed from a downpour to a trickle, more of a fine mist surrounding them and cooling the air, but the sky overhead is still black and angry. Thor must know what’s happened, because he only smiles sympathetically and hands Merlin’s reigns to Bucky, having readied Bucky’s horse before he even arrived as if he could sense Bucky would make his way down sooner or later, after Steve did. Bucky thanks him, and Thor nods wordlessly, and watches as Bucky leads Merlin to the lawn and climbs up into the saddle.  
  
He shivers and blinks rainwater from his eyes as they gallop along the lawn toward the trees. Merlin seems to know where they’re headed with Bucky barely guiding him, even though it’s been weeks, Bucky realizes, since the last time, because they often take Sam and Thor with them these days and Bucky had wanted to keep one spot a secret just for him and Steve.  
  
There is a figure at the edge of the cliff as Bucky approaches on his horse, cloaked and seated on the ground, with blond hair darkened because it’s soaking wet. He’s near the ruins, facing the water, looking out over the ocean that rages far below. Bucky wonders how long he’s been sitting there, in the rain. Hours, if he came directly here after leaving Bucky alone in the library. He must be frozen. Bucky slows Merlin and hops down off him, leaving the horse to wander over toward Steve’s as Bucky steps tentatively through the sopping grass that squishes underneath his boots. Steve is motionless, and Bucky is terrified.  
  
“I knew I would find you here,” he says, once he’s close enough to be heard over the wind. He remembers Steve saying the same thing to him, weeks ago, when Bucky had run to this place in his distress over his upcoming ball. It’s fitting, really, that they keep finding each other here in moments of agony. Although Bucky’s comparatively, was so much smaller than what has happened now to Steve.  
  
“I wonder if they can feel us,” Steve says, with his back still turned, “the ancient spirits. I wonder if they know we’re here. If they know that not everyone has forgotten them.”  
  
His hand presses flat into what’s left of the stone wall beside him, as if he can sense them beyond the veil. Bucky’s always felt them. It took his breath away, the first time he brought Steve here and Steve could feel them too. He aches to think of their loneliness and understands too well how it feels to be overlooked.  
  
“Are you alright?” he asks. It’s such a pathetically mediocre thing to say, in this moment, but he doesn’t know what else to ask.  
  
Steve turns to look at him, finally, and his face is streaked with tears.  
  
“Steve,” Bucky whispers, as the expression on his lovely face hits Bucky like a punch to the chest. There aren’t words to express the depths of his sadness. It’s like being trapped with a single candle at the bottom of a trench, not bright enough to illuminate his way out. He’s just enveloped in endless, crushing darkness.  
  
“I didn’t think I’d be this upset,” Steve tells him. “We always fought. He was always so disappointed in me. I was never enough, and we both knew it. I didn’t think I’d care, when he was gone.”  
  
“He was still your father. Mine is cold, and withholding, and I’ve never been enough either, but I’ll still be sad, when he dies.”  
  
Steve looks away, and his shoulders heave in a sigh, and Bucky can no longer stomach being so far away. He steps closer, tentative, until Steve looks back at him and breathes his name and then Bucky rushes for him, slipping down to the wet ground and tugging Steve into his arms. He holds desperately around Steve’s shoulders and Steve’s arms encircle him, his wet face pushing into Bucky’s neck and breathing him in. Steve is heavy against him, and ice cold, and Bucky wants so much to make everything alright again and he can’t.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Stevie,” he says again, like he had in the library. The words are even more inadequate this time around.  
  
“I’m sorry I left,” Steve mumbles. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”  
  
Bucky shakes his head insistently. “It’s alright, you needed to be alone. I understand.”  
  
“I didn’t want to be alone. I just didn’t know what to do. I always want to be with you.”  
  
“I don’t want to lose you,” Bucky says. It feels so selfish, but the words pour from his lips unstoppably. “The thought of you leaving is so … I can’t bear it. If I think about it, it feels like my heart will stop. I love you.”  
  
Steve makes a noise against Bucky’s ear and hugs him tighter, his arms squeezing hard enough around Bucky’s middle that it’s difficult to breathe.  
  
“I love you more than I ever thought possible,” Steve whispers. His breath is warm and humid against Bucky’s neck. “More than anything, more than everything. I can’t imagine ever being without you.”  
  
Tears spill down Bucky’s cheeks, mingling with the salty spray from the ocean breeze. He nudges Steve’s face and takes his mouth in a wet, tragic kiss.  
  
Bucky wants to ask what’s going to happen. How much longer they have together, if he’ll ever see Steve again once he goes away. He wants to demand Steve have answers to all the questions burning holes in his chest, but he doesn’t, because Steve doesn’t. Steve doesn’t know any more than Bucky does. They just hold onto each other in the rain, in the place that belongs only to them.  
  
* * *


	19. Begonia (Coming Danger)

“What is Steven going to do?”  
  
Bucky inhales and considers the question. It isn’t one he has an answer to. It’s all still such a fresh wound and he wants to drop to his knees and weep in despair whenever he thinks of it. Steve doesn’t seem to have any idea what he’s going to do, other than cling to Bucky at night and shiver whenever Bucky asks what he’s thinking. Bucky certainly can’t answer anything for him, to their inquiring stable boy wondering about the state of chaos they’ve been plunged into by this expected-but-unexpected news.  
  
His own father has been uncharacteristically evasive on the matter. Bucky had fully expected him to let Steve grieve for a few hours at most and then personally put him back in his carriage and send him home. The fact that he hasn’t, and it’s been days, has the hair on the back of Bucky’s neck standing constantly on end. He suspects his father is in possession of information that he isn’t sharing with them. At least, not yet.  
  
“I really don’t know,” he finally states.  
  
Next to him, Thor nods.  
  
He goes back about shovelling manure. Bucky’s boots are filthy with it, and he’s covered in dirt and straw and grime from helping Thor muck out the stables. Mere months ago, he would have balked at even the thought of this. It was servants’ work, tasks to be completed by men much lower than him and never discussed in his circles because even the concept of it was distasteful. More proper to just pretend as if these jobs were done after dark by magic. The wheels on which their world turns were never topics of dignified conversation. Living as Bucky once had required so much pretending. He knows that, now. He can’t unlearn it, even if Steve leaves and Bucky is herded like a lamb to the slaughter back into the life he’d always known was in his future – the life he’d, for a brief moment with Steve, dared to believe he could escape if he only wanted it badly enough.  
  
He’s reminded, as he often is, of how very far he’s come. And of how much he now has to lose.  
  
“And what about you?” Thor sticks the pitchfork into a stack of hay so it stays upright, and wipes his brow with the back of his hand.  
  
Bucky looks at him. At snowy blue eyes, tanned skin from working in the sun, pale blond hair falling in strings around his strong jaw. Bucky used to be so intimidated by him. Now he sees the kindness in Thor’s features, the gentleness of his hands despite his large frame, and wonders how he ever could have seen anything else. He wonders how many things people like him never, ever see, because they never bother to look.  
  
“I’ll miss him terribly. But this is how things are.”  
  
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”  
  
“What else am I supposed to do?” Bucky runs his hand over the mane of the sand-colored horse in between them. She’s young, still not fully grown, so he can see Thor’s face overtop of her back and Bucky doesn’t want those intense eyes boring into him anymore. They see far too much. Sometimes Bucky feels as if everyone who looks at him sees far too much. Maybe he’s the one who’s too transparent.  
  
“There’s always a choice.”  
  
“Not always. Steve can’t stay here and leave his mother alone. My father wouldn’t let him, even if he wanted to. And I can’t go with him. I have no money that’s truly mine, no skills, no contacts. Where would I go, if I left on my own? How would I survive?”  
  
Bucky remembers having this exact conversation with Steve, the very first time he took Steve to the ruins. Steve said very much the same thing, that Bucky didn’t have to accept his fate, that he could choose. He was wrong then, and Thor is wrong now. It’s a fantasy. Bucky would last a week on his own before he starved to death. He doesn’t know how to do anything he could earn a living at. He couldn’t build himself a house, he doesn’t know how to hunt or farm or find fresh water. An unhappy life is still a life, and it’s what has always been in the cards for him. For a brief moment he’d dared to hope he could have something more. He’d been so naïve.  
  
“I think you underestimate yourself.”  
  
Bucky shrugs one shoulder listlessly. He doesn’t have the energy to argue it any further. The weight of it all is crushing, and he doesn’t feel strong enough anymore to stay sturdy underneath it.  
  
* * *  
  
The pathway is slick and muddy from additional days and weeks of rain. It does seem finally to have subsided for good and the strong July sun is doing its best to dry up the damage. Bucky trudges back up toward the castle, passing farmhands and maids carrying baskets of vegetables or bundles of fresh laundry. He tries to smile politely at them. The castle staff is used to him being friendly, now. Not as friendly as Steve, Bucky still aims not to bother them or put them in a position of being in trouble with the strict housemaster, but he still usually smiles. Today it feels false on his face, like a clay mask, and he’s sure they can tell.  
  
He slips in through a servants’ entrance near the kitchens. The maids here barely react to his presence. A few of them look up from their tasks and then look disinterestedly back down. One gives him a smile and a small curtesy, and he nods respectfully in acknowledgement of it. The cook doesn’t even bother to glance in his direction. Not because she dislikes him, but because they’re all so used to him by now. Used to him using their spaces to escape his own, and used to the fact that they aren’t supposed to talk about it. Bucky’s sure they do, amongst themselves and each other, but they’ve kept his secrets.  
  
There is a pale green cannister in the center of their simple dining table holding a bouquet of fresh-cut daisies. As Bucky passes by the room where they eat, a maid he recognizes is arranging them and he catches her gaze. Her eyes widen for a moment and then she looks away; worried, perhaps, that he might be of the opinion that flowers aren’t for servants. Bucky could not explain the way that aches in his heart if he were paid a mountain of gold coins to do so.  
  
He slips through a narrow door and climbs covertly up their hidden staircases along the outside wall of the castle so he won’t track mud along the main hallways. The King wouldn’t be around to catch him at this time of the morning, but Bucky doesn’t want to make more work for anyone than he already does. They devote their lives, these silent, stalwart people, to caring for Bucky and his family. Most of their daily work goes entirely unnoticed and unappreciated. It is an utterly thankless position, and none in Bucky’s family other than perhaps Becca has ever been worthy of it.  
  
“There you are,” a breathless voice says behind him.  
  
Bucky jumps, not realizing he had paused halfway between the third and fourth floor landings, lost in thought. Natasha is behind him when he turns, her hair typically messy and her cheeks flushed like she’d sprinted up the stairs to catch him.  
  
“Are you alright?” he asks.  
  
“I am, yes.” She presses her lips together and frowns at him. It has Bucky’s heart leaping up into his throat.  
  
“What’s happened?”  
  
“Have you seen Steve, this morning?”  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “Not since breakfast. He wanted some time on his own.”  
  
“You should go see him.”  
  
“Natasha, what’s happened?” Bucky asks again, more urgently this time.  
  
“I spoke to Sam …” For a moment she looks as if something important is just on the tip of her tongue, but then she shakes her head quickly. “It’s not my place. Just go see him.”  
  
“Natasha!” he calls, as she turns and hurries back down the stairs, but she exits the stairwell through a door and doesn’t answer him.  
  
Bucky’s whole body trembles in fear. He runs, taking the rest of the stairs two at a time and bursting back out into the main hallway, uncaring if he’s overheard or seen or if he leaves an incriminating trail of muddy footprints on the rug behind him. Steve’s chambers are at the end of the hall and he hurries to them with his heart thudding so dramatically in his chest he can feel it in his fingers and toes. He knocks loudly on the door and then flings it open before Steve has the chance to answer it or give Bucky permission to enter.  
  
Steve is sitting in a dark green armchair by the window. It wasn’t there before; Bucky recognizes it from where it used to sit next to a tall rosewood chest of drawers across the room. Steve’s dragged it over the floor and to the window so he can sit with the Summer breezes drifting in and the sun warming his face. He looks up as Bucky bursts unceremoniously into his room.  
  
An overwhelming sense of having already lived this moment fills Bucky, because it’s just like the library. Steve alone, in a seat by the window, with a blank stare on his face and a letter in his hands. The dread that creeps up Bucky’s spine feels blazing hot and frigidly cold all at once, like the time he was bed-stricken with a fever that made him shiver and sweat and imagine all kinds of things floating in the room around him that weren’t really there.  
  
“Steve,” Bucky says, because it’s the only word his mouth can form. How things could have possibly gotten worse, Bucky can’t fathom, but it’s clear from Steve’s expression that they have.  
  
Steve wordlessly holds the letter out. When Bucky doesn’t immediately move to take it, Steve lets his fingers go limp and the paper drifts to the floor like Autumn leaves falling from a tree.  
  
Bucky says his name again. Desperately, this time. Pleading, although for what, he doesn’t know.  
  
“Read it.” Steve’s shoulders drop in a heavy sigh and he looks back out the window. “It’s so beautiful, here. I never appreciated the view from these windows as much as I should have.”  
  
The last thing in the world Bucky wants to do is walk over and pick the letter up, but it’s what he does. He forces his legs to move, each step feeling as if it’s dragged through wet sand. The letter shakes in his hand as he lifts it off the rug, and he has to grip it with the fingers of his other hand to steady it enough to read the messily scrawled words.  
  
It’s Steve’s mother’s handwriting, he recognizes it from the note about the death of his father, but much less legible this time, as if it was written in haste, in a hurry, in danger.  
  
_My love,_  
  
_I’m so regretful to be the bearer of yet more bad news. Chaos has erupted in our home. A faction of the courtiers has betrayed us. They tried to have me poisoned, I am only alive to write this to you because my maid discovered the plot and warned me before it was too late._  
  
_They do not want you to assume the throne. I suppose they have felt this all along, and we were too trusting to see it. Or perhaps your father was aware and never communicated it to me, I couldn’t say for sure. All I know is they have taken control of the court. If you return they will certainly attempt to kill you as well._  
  
_I don’t know when I’ll next be able to contact you. As I write this, a smaller group that remains loyal to your father is preparing to smuggle me out of the city. I wish I could give you more information but I don’t have it, and it’s for your own protection that you are kept similarly in the dark. Please do not come looking for me, not yet. Stay where you are safe, I beg you. I cannot lose you, as well._  
  
_I love you, and I will find you as soon as I am able. You have my word._  
  
_Your loving Mother._  
  
“I knew no one wanted me to be their king,” Steve says bitterly, as Bucky finishes the letter and looks back up at him in alarm. Steve is still staring out the window, but his hands are clasped together, fingers squeezing so tight that the color has drained from his knuckles. “I fucking _told them_ that, so many times, and they never believed me. If they’d let me abdicate, let some distant cousin have it instead, none of this would have happened.”  
  
Bucky just shakes his head, with his mouth hanging open. He can’t begin to make sense of any of it. Of what it means, of what his father will do when he finds out. He might cast Steve out anyway. The King has never believed in backing down from a challenge. He might have the staff pack up Steve’s belongings and put him physically into a carriage and send him back to his certain death at the hands of an insurrection.  
  
“There will be war.” Finally, Steve turns his head and looks back to Bucky with anger simmering in his sky-blue eyes. “They’re so stupid if they think neighboring kingdoms will just sit on their hands and allow this to happen. A divided court is a vulnerable one. My father made peace treaties that are all void, now. Invading armies will be at the castle walls in a week, my land will be carved up into fragments and my people will pay the price for this foolishness when they’ve done nothing to deserve it.”  
  
“What do we do?” Bucky asks. His voice wavers, weak and pathetic.  
  
“Nothing,” Steve mutters. He looks back out the window.  
  
“Steve.”  
  
“What can I do?” he asks. He should be yelling, raging, but his voice is deadly calm. “There isn’t anything to be done, Buck. If the court doesn’t want me … power requires leverage. I have none.”  
  
“You are the rightful heir!”  
  
“That only matters if people believe it matters. I don’t even want the damn thing, and they know that. How would I take it? I don’t have an army on my side. I don’t have anything.”  
  
They stare at each other for only a moment before Steve stands and walks a few steps further away. He stays facing in the opposite direction. Bucky can see muscles working in the back of his neck, can feel tragedy pouring off him in palpable waves even from halfway across a room. He wants to pull Steve into his arms, kiss him and promise him everything will be alright, but it would be a lie if he did. Steve doesn’t deserve yet more lies, or stories, or betrayals. Nothing Bucky could say or do would fix this. He’s helpless. They both are.  
  
“What are – ” Bucky begins, and then realizes he’s already asked that. He’s been asking it for three days and Steve doesn’t have an answer for it. He sharply shakes his head and momentarily covers his face with his hands, sighing unhappily. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t know. It’s not fair for me to keep expecting you to have answers.”  
  
Steve turns to him, the intensity in his eyes dimmed a little. His forehead is wrinkled into a frown and the corners of his mouth are downturned. Softly, he says, “I’m not angry with you.”  
  
Like a newborn foal taking its first steps, Bucky stumbles unsteadily towards him. They collide, Bucky’s arms wrapping around Steve’s neck and Steve taking Bucky’s waist in his hands, foreheads knocking painfully together. Steve’s fingers squeeze into Bucky’s flesh, desperation vibrating between them with their gasped breaths.  
  
“I love you,” Bucky whispers.  
  
“I love you, too,” Steve returns. “God, I wish that meant something bigger than the two of us. I wish it could grant us power or safety, or the promise of always being together.”  
  
Bucky tilts his chin up to press a kiss to Steve’s lips instead of answering. He never believed the poets, when they would wax about all the wonderful, transformative things true love could accomplish. He always thought they must have been funny in the head, or lying. He started to believe it when Steve would kiss him or hold him or gaze at him as if Bucky were the most beautiful thing his eyes had ever seen. Now that’s been burned down, as well. Bucky might have been better off if they’d never met. Surely it will hurt more, to have to live the rest of his life without Steve and know so acutely what he’s missing, than it would to have never known love at all.  
  
“We have to tell my father,” he says, regretfully. “To show him the letter.”  
  
“He won’t be able to help. He won’t know where they’ve taken my mother.”  
  
Bucky cups Steve’s cheek in his hand. There are tears on it and Bucky brushes them away with his thumb. Steve’s words are the truth, they just don’t change what’s inevitable. The King will learn of these events sooner or later. It isn’t a secret they’d have any hope of keeping. Bucky wishes they could just remain here together forever, wrapped up in each other’s arms, hiding away from the world. But there’s nowhere to hide from this, and they both know it.  
  
* * *


	20. Anemone (Fading Hope)

The King’s forehead is drawn into a heavy frown as he reads the letter over for a third time, as if he’s hoping to glean some insight from it that he could not find the first two times.  
  
Bucky watches from across the room, fingers playing nervously in his untucked shirttails, raptly following the movement of his father’s eyes as they scan over the hastily scrawled words. Steve stands next to him, tall and impressive as ever in his outward appearance but terrified on the inside, and Bucky can sense that in him. Can feel it radiating off of him like waves of heat, like rolling fog. Bucky’s mother and sister sit with their backs straight and their hands folded on the chairs near the fireplace in the King’s study, their faces similarly trained expectantly on him as they wait. Daniel is near the window, attempting to peer at the letter over the King’s shoulder but trying to remain inconspicuous about it.  
  
Peggy knows, Bucky keeps forgetting that. He keeps operating as if what he and Steve do together in dark rooms after everyone else has gone to bed is a secret kept just between the two of them and the universe, but it isn’t. Peggy knows, Steve’s valet knows, Thor knows. Natasha almost certainly has figured it out. Likely other servants have, as well. He’s been so naïve, to have assumed they were fooling everyone. Not when his own bed has been so often unslept in, not when they’ve snuck out more than a few times through Steve’s window and left a rope hanging four storeys down the side of the castle, not when Steve keeps nicking cooking oil from the kitchens.  
  
Perhaps everyone knows. Everyone except the one person who has the power to force them apart, the man currently sitting at his desk with a letter from Steve’s mother in his hand and their fate resting at his royal feet.  
  
Bucky can scarcely breathe.  
  
Finally the King sets the parchment down onto the desk in front of him. He looks up, exacting gaze finding Steve, and what he says is not at all what Bucky is expecting. “I’m sorry, Steven.”  
  
Beside him, Steve is silent for a moment. When he speaks, it is with the same air of surprise that Bucky feels. “Sir?”  
  
“It should not have ended up this way.” The King leans back in his chair, hands clasping over his protruding stomach. He does look genuinely empathetic, and Bucky’s not sure he’s ever seen his father’s face take that shape. He wasn’t sure the man was capable of it. “Had I known there was a plot afoot, I would never have allowed you to come here and leave your poor mother alone. I can’t help but feel partly responsible. I allowed my lifelong friendship with your father to cloud my judgement.”  
  
“Where would she have gone?” Steve’s voice wavers, and Bucky knows as well as Steve does that it is a pointless query. There is no way for anyone to know, that is the purpose of her fleeing in the dead of night and keeping her location from her son.  
  
“I wish I had any inkling,” the King says heavily. “I’m afraid I do not.”  
  
“What am I to do?”  
  
Bucky looks at him. Steve is staring imploringly at the King, and Bucky sees it more starkly than he ever has. Steve has been so remarkable from the moment Bucky met him. Handsome, broad-shouldered, brimming with confidence. He laughs so loudly, he makes friends with such ease, he’s always seemed so completely sure of himself. But he isn’t. He’s barely over 20 years old. He’s too young by decades to rule a country or enact laws or have the responsibility of tens of thousands of lives placed into his shaking hands. He’s just a boy, and he’s scared and unsure, begging Bucky’s father for guidance because his own father is gone and his home has been upended.  
  
The King frowns and the corners of his mouth turn down. He’s confused by the question. The answer in his mind should be obvious, that is apparent in the harsher tone of his voice as he flatly states, “tell your valet to begin gathering your things.”  
  
“You’re sending him back?” Bucky asks. The words come out much louder and more abrupt than he meant, and uncomfortable butterflies explode in his stomach as his father’s sharp gaze turns to Bucky for a moment.  
  
The King doesn’t bother answering Bucky’s question. He looks back at Steve and says, “you are the King. You became King the moment your father’s heart stopped beating, and a King does not run away in shame.”  
  
“It’s not shame!” Bucky protests. “He’ll be killed if he goes back!”  
  
“James,” his father snaps, without looking at him again.   
  
“He’s right,” Steve says. “She said so. They’ve taken control, what can I do? I can hardly roll through the gates with a valet and a handful of footmen and take back the castle.”  
  
“George,” Winifred implores. The King looks to her, and something Bucky doesn’t understand passes between them. A silent conversation, his mother appealing their case, but it isn’t enough. The King simply shakes his head and addresses Steve again.  
  
“I am sorry,” he repeats. “Truly I am. This is not what your father would have wanted. But you have a duty to your people.”  
  
“And if I’m killed the moment I set foot beyond the boarder?”  
  
“That will be regrettable,” the King intones, and doesn’t sound like he means it in the least.  
  
“You’re sending him to his death and you don’t even care!” Bucky cries. He feels wild, feral with anger and desperation. He hadn’t expected his father to be particularly helpful because he rarely is, but he never in his darkest imaginings would have predicted his father just putting Steve in a carriage and sending him back, alone with no army and no assistance and no hope.  
  
“James!” the King shouts, punctured by the slamming of his hand down onto the wood of his desk. “This doesn’t concern you.”  
  
“Like hell it doesn’t!”  
  
“Hold your tongue!”  
  
“Buck,” Steve says softly, reaching for Bucky’s arm, cajoling him, but Bucky shakes him off and steps forward.  
  
“It concerns me because I love him!” he yells, blurting it out all at once, setting it before them because there is nothing further they can take from him. Bucky’s already lost Becca. He’s already destined to be a footnote in his own life. If they take Steve, he’s lost everything.  
  
Peggy’s gasp is loud even through the thundering of Bucky’s heart in his own ears. Next to him, Steve swears quietly.  
  
The King’s eyes narrow, regarding Bucky as if he’s a cockroach he’d like to squish underneath the toe of his boot. Slowly, terrifyingly, he asks, “I beg your pardon?”  
  
Bucky’s chest rattles as he draws a gravel-laced breath into his lungs. Numbness slides along his extremities, fingers curled into tight balls at his sides but he barely feels his fingernails digging harshly into his palms. Fear hits him with all the force of running headlong into a stone fence, and it’s too late to take it back, so he doesn’t. His voice wavers and his heart races but he holds firm.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, “it wasn’t supposed to happen. I tried to be interested in all those beautiful girls at the ball, I really tried, but I couldn’t do it. I’m in love with him. He makes me feel like I can fly, he makes me feel safe and cared for and _happy_. You can’t do this, you can’t send him away to be slaughtered.”  
  
His father stares. His gaze is piercing and it slices through Bucky, sending panic licking like flames up and down his spine.  
  
“Oh, James,” his mother sighs. Bucky looks in her direction, and her gloved hand is covering her mouth, eyes wide and shining. Next to her, Peggy’s eyes are closed and her brow is furrowed. Praying, perhaps. Asking God to save Bucky’s dammed, ruined soul. Bucky’s sure it’s far too late for that.  
  
“What does that mean?” the King asks in an icy, quiet voice. “What have you done?”  
  
“Buck, you don’t have to do this,” Steve tells him tensely.  
  
Bucky’s head swivels and he finds Steve’s eyes, clear and bright and beautiful. All the things they’ve seen, the way they’ve sparkled with mirth as he laughs, the way they’ve simmered with emotion as he’s stroked Bucky’s cheek and whispered lovely things to him about the life they could have had together if everything were different. He’s Bucky’s anchor in a raging storm, he’s a light shining through the darkest night, guiding Bucky home when he’s been so lost for so much longer than he knew.  
  
“I love you,” Bucky tells him. His voice doesn’t waver this time. He means it and it gives him strength.  
  
“What have you done to my son?” the King growls.  
  
A muscle works in Steve’s jaw. For a moment, he just stares, like Bucky’s father had. His eyes search Bucky’s face, looking for clues or direction or something similar that they can’t speak about here, in front of Bucky’s family. If he finds it, Bucky will never know, because Steve turns away from him, back to the King, and coldly says, “you knew why my father banished me. You knew it wasn’t just the tattoo. Bucky never stood a chance. He’s weak, and I manipulated him. The fault is entirely mine.”  
  
Bucky blinks, and yells his dissent at the same time his father bellows for the guards standing just outside the door. They burst into the room in a clatter of noise and fury, swords drawn before them.  
  
“Seize him!” the King shouts.  
  
“No, stop it!” Bucky cries, lurching forward, trying to grab for Steve as the guards’ hands close tightly around his arms. Steve barely struggles against them. “He’s lying, he didn’t do anything to me! He’s not a snake-charmer! I fell in love with him, you can’t do this!”  
  
“Take him to his rooms and see that no one leaves or enters until morning,” the King commands. To Steve, he spits, “you and your men will leave at first light. This is the end of the alliance between our two kingdoms.”  
  
“Are you certain that’s wise?” Steve asks, his lip curling and his eyes glazing into cruelty, transforming before Bucky’s very eyes back into the brash, unpleasant person he first met, so many months ago. “It seems a murderous, plotting faction of traitors would be just the sort you’d like to have as your friends. Especially after they execute me, since I defiled your son.”  
  
“Get him out of my sight,” the King demands, and the guards drag Steve, smirking all the way, from the room.  
  
“Steve!” Bucky shouts, but a third guard restrains him on his father’s barked orders and he isn’t strong enough to break free from the man’s grip.  
  
Winifred sniffs and asks, “James, how could you let this happen? What were you possibly thinking?”  
  
“He’s lying,” Bucky yells again, as tears roll down his cheeks. “He’s trying to protect me, he didn’t do anything I didn’t want. I love him.”  
  
“George,” Winifred says again, and when she’s ignored, to the guard she cries, “release him!”  
  
The hands wrapped around his arms loosen and the man backs away. Bucky’s knees give out underneath him and he falls into a miserable heap on the floor. His shoulders shake, his chest aches, his head spins. The rug doesn’t seem to break his fall, he just keeps falling and falling and falling, down into an endless revolving abyss. Blackness that seems deeper than the center of the earth envelops him.  
  
“I will deal with you in the morning,” his father says, sending a frosty glare in Bucky’s direction as he marches past him and out of the room.  
  
Winifred scurries after him, followed closely by the guard.  
  
Bucky presses a hand tightly over his mouth to cover the desperate, devastated sobs that claw their way up his throat. It’s nearly a scream, an anguished shriek of pain and torment, muffled only by his palm. He can’t see through the blur of tears, he can’t catch a breath that doesn’t sting like broken glass in his lungs. Peggy is next to him in an instant, dropping to her knees beside him and pulling him roughly against her. He’s helpless to fight it. Bucky buries his face in his sister’s lap and cries until he can’t cry anymore.  
  
* * *  
  
He’s never felt so much like a ghost in his own rooms. His curtains, his bedclothes, the red orchid that has sat for years on a table next to the window, it all seems unfamiliar even though it’s been unchanged for as long as Bucky can remember. Bucky sits on his sofa near the cold fireplace – a place he’s sat with Steve, kissed him, been held by him – and stares at the flower until everything else he can see slips out of focus.  
  
He thinks of the Amaryllis. How excited he’d been to see them, when they were only bulbs nestled in dark, moist soil. How he’d wondered about their coloring. The argument he’d had with Steve in the glasshouse that first time. The way Steve’s face had looked when the flowers had finally bloomed. The way he’d smiled and gently touched the petals, and shared in Bucky’s sense of wonder.  
  
Every flower and leaf and fern brought to their garden from foreign lands is a little piece of the world, a little taste of faraway places and interesting people. He’d poured over the botanical journals, watched them all bloom and grow, daydreamt of adventures, of rainforests and deserts and beaches he will never see. He’d been trapped, locked away like a bird in a cage, and the exotic plants made him feel less alone.  
  
It seems pathetic, now, to consider that maybe they’d been his only friends until Steve changed everything. Bucky can never go back. Steve will be taken from him in the morning and Bucky will never, ever see him again, but regardless, he can’t go back to who he was before. He knows things, now. He knows what it’s really like to have friends. He knows what it’s like to take risks, and break the rules, and feel free. He knows what it’s like to be _loved_. And nothing will ever be the same.  
  
As darkness falls, Natasha brings him dinner on a tray. He barely touches it, unable to swallow more than a few mouthfuls before nausea overtakes him and he can’t think of food anymore. He slides the tray away from him on the coffee table, the smell of meat and gravy making him dizzy.  
  
“Go to him,” Natasha says softly.  
  
It takes Bucky nearly a full minute to comprehend her. The words find his ears but his brain won’t make sense of them immediately, and once it does, they only amplify his grief. She knows, and he should have guessed that. He raises his face to look at her, standing near his bed with one of his shirts folded in her hands. Maybe she’d been his friend all along. Maybe he never realized that.  
  
“I can’t,” he whispers. “There are guards outside his door.”  
  
“Bribe them. Plead with them. _Try_ ,” she insists. “Maybe they won’t let you in, but how are you going to feel for the rest of your life if you don’t even try to see him? To say goodbye?”  
  
Bucky doesn’t answer her. He curls into himself, drawing his knees up close to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Nothing has ever felt like it did when Steve’s arms were around him. Nothing will feel that way ever again.  
  
She’s in front of him before he notices her moving, sinking slowly to her knees on the floor and shaking him gently with her hands on his forearm. “Bucky.”  
  
Natasha has never called him that before. He’s not sure she’s ever even called him James.  
  
“You really love him?”  
  
“Word travels fast around here.” Bucky sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.  
  
One side of her mouth twitches into a twisted smile. “It does, yes. Nobody downstairs can keep their mouth shut.”  
  
He presses his lips together and nods, answering her original question. What does it matter, if all the servants know? Their pity or their ridicule couldn’t hurt Bucky more than he’s already hurt. “I do love him. I really do.”  
  
Her shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath. Then she stands and holds her hand out emphatically. “Come,” she says, mind clearly made up and unwilling to take no for an answer.  
  
They tiptoe together through dimly lit, deserted hallways. Steve’s chambers are across the castle, and Bucky and Natasha poke their heads around a corner at the mouth of the corridor to survey the situation. Two guards stand outside Steve’s door, motionless and intimidating. Bucky’s heart sinks, even though the sight is not unexpected, but Natasha winks at him.  
  
“Leave them to me,” she whispers, and before Bucky can stop her, she’s straightening up and moving away from him.  
  
“Natasha!” he hisses. She ignores him, so he’s forced to chase after her.  
  
She saunters toward the guards, greeting them with a confident, casual, “hello, boys.”  
  
“No one is allowed in or out,” the shorter one recites emotionlessly to her, as if he’s reading from a script.  
  
The taller one eyes Bucky, an unreadable expression on his red face.  
  
“What if I asked nicely?”  
  
“The King would have our heads.”  
  
“Natasha,” Bucky says again. He longs to see Steve again, burns for it like a fever or spiders under his skin, but not at the expense of Natasha getting herself in trouble. She’s been so good to him. Bucky feels on the verge of tears again. This was such a mistake.  
  
“Haven’t you ever been in love?” she asks.  
  
The two men exchange a glance, and Bucky gulps down his nerves. If there was ever a moment to be brave, this is it. “Please? I won’t be long, just let me say goodbye. I’m never going to see him again.”  
  
“If anyone found out …” the taller guard warns.  
  
“They won’t,” Natasha promises, “and I’ll run down to the kitchens and bring you something sweet for your trouble. Deal?”  
  
They hesitate just for another moment, but then the shorter one sighs tiredly and nods, stepping out of the way.  
  
Bucky’s heart skips a beat. He could burst back into tears and pick Natasha up to spin her around. He settles for sending a look of gratitude in her direction before he slips through the door.  
  
Steve’s room is dark, lit only by moonlight streaming in through an open window. Steve is sitting on the floor next to it, legs tucked up against his chest, arms wrapped around them and face pressed into his elbow. He looks up at the noise of Bucky entering, revealing a tear-streaked face.  
  
“Bucky,” he breathes.  
  
Bucky’s throat closes for a moment.  
  
Steve clambers to his feet and stumbles forward, and Bucky rushes to him, meeting him in the center of the room and crashing painfully into him. Steve flings his arms around Bucky’s neck, clinging tightly to him. Their foreheads bump together and Bucky presses a desperate kiss to Steve’s lips as his heart thunders in his chest.  
  
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Steve whispers, emotion pouring off him in waves that Bucky could drown in if he didn’t have Steve to hold onto.  
  
“You shouldn’t have done that.” Fresh tears spill down Bucky’s cheeks and he trembles everywhere, stopped from breaking apart altogether only because Steve’s arms are around him. “Said all those things, made him think you forced me.”  
  
“I was always going to leave one way or another,” Steve says in a wobbly voice. His breath is warm on Bucky’s cheek. “But you have to stay, to live in the consequences of what we’ve done. I couldn’t let them think it was your fault.”  
  
“It was no one’s fault. I love you, it isn’t something to be blamed on anyone.”  
  
Steve sniffs and his fingers grasp at Bucky’s shirt. “I love you, too. I always, always will. Until my last breath.”  
  
Bucky swallows thickly. His insides twist into knots, like snakes coiling around each other. “What am I supposed to do without you?”  
  
He doesn’t get an answer, only a quiet sob and Steve’s wet face pushing into his neck. “Stay with me?”  
  
“I can’t,” Bucky says regretfully. The words hurt on their way across his tongue. He wishes with everything he has in him that he could stay. “The guards outside …”  
  
“Please,” Steve begs, broken and miserable. “They’re already taking you from me, what more can they do? Please don’t go, just let us have one more night.”  
  
Bucky wants it, he wants it more than anything. He yearns to just melt further into Steve’s arms, to kiss him until they can’t breathe, to leave fingernail marks along his porcelain skin, to slide his tongue over every inch of the body he knows better than his own. Disaster is still before them, and yet he feels more at peace just now in their embrace than he has in days. Steve’s mere presence calms him, soothes his aching heart, fills in the cracks in his soul that Bucky didn’t ever notice until something mended them.  
  
“We’ll be in so much trouble,” he gasps, on a sharp, shuddered inhale, but then he kisses Steve instead of waiting for a response. Steve pleads again, even as he’s walking them backwards toward the bed and Bucky isn’t fighting him or pulling away. He can’t.   
  
“Just once more,” Steve murmurs against his mouth. His hands slip underneath Bucky’s shirt and splay across his back. “You have meant everything to me, don’t let me leave without knowing what you taste like one last time. Feeling you against me, it’s all I’ve lived for. If I’m to perish by the sword of a traitorous courtier in a few days’ time, give me this to remember as I go and I’ll die happier than I had ever been before I found you.”  
  
An unhappy noise tears from Bucky’s throat and he kisses Steve ferociously. The thought of it is far too much to bear so he dives into Steve instead. Steve has always been his salvation.  
  
They tip backwards, tumbling down onto the mattress, hands grasping at each other because they’re terrified to let go. Steve moves with him, keeping him close as Bucky devours his mouth, soft moans in Bucky’s ear as Bucky presses his thigh down. He finds Steve warm and stiff and wanting him, and Bucky wants him more than ever. Every inch of his skin burns with it, his very soul feels alight with desire, all of it razor sharp because it’s wrapped so thickly in tragedy.  
  
He tears at Steve’s clothes and his own, fumbling fingers stripping them bare so there’s nothing between them but skin and quickly beating hearts. Steve is hot against him, beads of sweat mixing on his flushed cheeks with his tears that Bucky kisses away with salt bursting on his lips. They fit so perfectly together, like they were made for this. Like they were carved by the heavens and put on this earth to find each other, only to be torn apart almost as soon as they had.  
  
“Steve,” he whimpers.  
  
“Shh,” Steve murmurs to him. His hand slides over Bucky’s hair, settling warm and heavy curled around the back of his neck. Keeping Bucky close to him. “It’s alright. I’m here, I love you. Don’t think about tomorrow. Let us pretend for just one more night that this could have been our forever.”  
  
* * *


	21. Daffodil (Rebirth)

Bucky awakes with a start, to the sound of an angry female voice just outside the door.  
  
“Let me in, immediately,” she’s ordering loudly. It’s his mother.  
  
His eyes open and his stomach lurches. Steve’s panicked face is the first thing he sees. Steve swears and sits up, looking around frantically. They hadn’t intended on falling asleep together. Bucky had curled into Steve, warm and sated but still heartbroken, and had meant to only stay for a moment longer. He’d meant to kiss Steve one last time, promise he’d always love him and never forget him, and then regrettably take his leave. It would have stung like a fresh, gaping wound, to walk away from Steve knowing it would be the last time they’d ever touch and kiss and set eyes on each other, but Bucky would have forced himself to do it. Hours ago, he wouldn’t have had a choice. Now it’s too late.  
  
Steve starts to move, but Bucky grabs his wrist and holds him there. He’s terrified, his heart beating painfully up into his throat, but there’s no point in trying to hide. They’re trapped.  
  
“I’ll go out the window,” Steve whispers tersely.  
  
“It’s your room,” Bucky reminds him, hopeless and fatally resigned to the trouble they’re in. “It won’t matter if you aren’t here when she comes in, she’ll still know what happened.”  
  
Steve stares at Bucky, his bright eyes shining and his breath quick and shallow. “They’ll have me killed.”  
  
“No, they won’t. They need you. They need you to go back to your castle and rule your kingdom and continue to be an ally to ours. That was the entire point of bringing you here a year ago.”  
  
“Your father said …”  
  
“I know what he said. He didn’t mean it, he was angry. He still needs you.” Bucky tugs gently at Steve’s arm, urging him to lie back down, to face the reality of the situation they find themselves in. He isn’t sure he’s right about anything he’s claiming, but he does know their hope has been dashed out of thin air. “They already know what we’ve done. This changes nothing.”  
  
Steve lies back down and puts a trembling hand on Bucky’s cheek. They listen, as the guard outside timidly argues he was instructed not to open the door for anyone but the King, and Winifred screeches at him in protest.  
  
“What do we do?” Steve asks. His voice shakes. His eyes, bluer than the bluest Summer sky, glint with fear and uncertainty and panic, seemingly made worse but the fact that Bucky remains still.  
  
Bucky’s hands shake too, and his heart is going so fast now that he feels sick, but he moves in closer to Steve. He slides one arm around Steve’s back and holds him tight. Their foreheads rest together, inhaling the same air. “Nothing.”  
  
“Alright,” Steve says breathlessly. His arms go around Bucky as well.  
  
His mother’s voice demands, “if you don’t open this door, I will shut you and your family inside a wooden shack and I will burn it to the ground!”  
  
It’s an empty threat and likely the guard knows it, but the scrape of a key in the lock reveals it’s worked anyway. If possible, the speed of Bucky’s heartbeat increases again. He knows very little of medicine, but enough to wonder whether his constantly racing heart might be a problem in the long-run.  
  
“I love you,” he tells Steve, ignoring everything else. He wants to say it a million times. He needs Steve to know it, more than he needs air to breathe.  
  
“I will love you forever,” Steve answers, breathless and emotional, “no matter what happens.”  
  
The door crashes open, loud and dramatic.  
  
“James,” his mother’s voice says sharply, behind them.  
  
Bucky ignores her and doesn’t move an inch. He kisses Steve’s cheek and continues, “until I die. Longer, even. To the end, like it says on your arm.”  
  
Winifred repeats his name, although slightly easier this time. Almost sad.  
  
“What?” Bucky answers, still motionless. A tear rolls down his cheek and Steve brushes it away.  
  
“Look at me.”  
  
“I’m not leaving him.”  
  
A strange tranquility washes over Bucky, like weighted stillness after a storm. Suddenly, he isn’t afraid. It hits him, all at once, that Steve has been right all along. Bucky has lived for two decades believing he was trapped behind the castle gates, but they’re only gates. They’re only stone and iron. The only thing keeping Bucky here was himself. He’s resigned, but he’s also never felt braver in his entire life. Loving Steve has given him wings he never knew he could have.  
  
When he speaks again, he addresses Steve. “I’m not leaving you. They’ll have to drag me out. They’ll have to throw me in the dungeon.”  
  
For a third time, Winifred says his name. This time it’s his nickname, it’s _Bucky_ , and it’s beseeching.  
  
“I don’t care, do you hear me?” Bucky tells her. He speaks to her but locks his gaze with Steve’s. There are tears in Steve’s eyes, pooling along his long eyelashes. “You can send him away if you want but I’ll just go after him. You’ll have to lock me up, until the day I die. Otherwise the moment you remove the shackles, I’ll run away and I’ll never come back.”  
  
Heavy silence hangs in the air, and then his mother’s voice says, “leave us.”  
  
For a moment, Bucky thinks she’s speaking to Steve, until a guard’s voice questions, “your Majesty?”  
  
“You heard what I said,” she intones impatiently, and Bucky listens to footsteps and the closing door.  
  
“You would come after me?” Steve whispers. He looks like he scarcely dares to believe it.  
  
Bucky kisses him, not caring for a second that his mother is watching. “There’s no place they could send you that I wouldn’t find you. Even if I have to walk to the ends of the earth.”  
  
“What if they put me in the dungeon instead of you?” Steve asks, a teasing lilt to his voice. The tears in his eyes are happy ones, now.  
  
“I would break you out.” Bucky smiles and kisses him again. “A daring escape, in the moonlight.”  
  
“Stop this,” Winifred sighs in exasperation. “I don’t know that these theatrics are necessary, or helpful.”  
  
“Would you marry me, one day?” Steve asks. He’s grinning so wide his eyes have nearly disappeared.  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” she repeats. “You’re being ridiculous, both of you. No one would allow you to marry.”  
  
“A secret wedding, then,” Bucky says to Steve. “In the forest. Surrounded by flowers and songbirds.”  
  
“We could train a squirrel to perform the ceremony.”  
  
“Bucky.” The fourth time, his name is said in pleading, nearly begging him to finally pay her attention, so Bucky relents and looks at her over his shoulder. There are tears in her eyes, as well. “You really love him?”  
  
Bucky nods. “I’m sorry. I love him and I’m not giving him up. You’ll have to kill me first.”  
  
“Will you stop saying those things?” She heaves another sigh, heavy with emotion, and then reaches into a pocket sewn into the side of her dressing gown. A small brown pouch emerges in her hand, and she holds it out. “Take this.”  
  
Bucky frowns. “What is it?”  
  
His mother’s expression is sad but determined. “All this talk of dungeons and walking to the ends of the earth, and yet you don’t really have a plan, do you?”  
  
“A plan for what?”  
  
“If you won’t give him up then you’ll have to leave. It’s the only way. You could never be together here.” She shakes the pouch for emphasis, and it clinks as coins bounce off each other inside it. “It isn’t much but it will last until you can make a life for yourself. You’ll have to go now, before your father wakes. Take a coach from the stables, get as far away as you can.”  
  
It’s the last thing on earth Bucky was expecting to hear. He blinks, sitting up and staring at his mother, trying to work out the trick or trap in her words. “You … you’ll let me go?”  
  
Slowly, she walks towards them. She drops the sack of coins onto the bed and reaches out to take Bucky’s face in her hands. Bucky tugs discreetly at the bedsheets, aware that they’re both bare underneath them. Her fingers stroke gently through his hair and she kisses his forehead.  
  
“You are my son, and I love you,” she tells him, teary but smiling. “My youngest, my baby. I will miss you every day that I am alive. This is not what I would have planned for you, but all a mother wants in this world is for her children to be loved. If this boy loves you, in the way that makes him promise forever, then you must go with him. Forever doesn’t come along twice, my darling.”  
  
She kisses both his cheeks and then she’s gone before Bucky can make any sense of her leaving. He looks to Steve, to his bright eyes brimming with tears. Bucky inhales, unsure of everything, and exhales, his entire world tilted on an impractical angle. He tips forward and falls into Steve, their lips finding each other in fierce devotion.  
  
* * *  
  
Steve tightens the strap on a saddle bag, securing it to the left side of his horse so it won’t rattle around too much as they ride. It took them only minutes to wildly gather a few meager possessions – clothing, the money from Bucky’s mother, a compass, a bar of soap, salve for burns that Natasha had brought up to Steve’s room and pressed into Bucky’s hands before wrapping him into a warm hug. Thor is readying their horses while Sam helps Steve with the bags, and Bucky is standing back a short distance from them, watching them work with numbness back in his fingers.  
  
It is morning, but not yet first light. Their figures cast blue shadows along the ground as they work, quickly and quietly so as not to arouse more suspicion than they already have. Bucky’s stomach churns in worry that they’ll be betrayed, by a guard or a maid who saw them rushing to collect their things and smuggle them out of the castle. He worries for his mother, when the King finds out what’s happened. He hopes she’ll play dumb, pretend she had nothing whatsoever to do with it. He worries for his sisters, and the friends he’s made, and for himself. He worries the most for Steve’s mother. They don’t know where she is and have scarcely more than the barest of clues with which to begin their search, but they have to try. _She’ll love you_ , Steve had promised. Bucky worries she won’t.  
  
The sum of all that gnawing worry isn’t larger, though, than his desire to be with Steve. The revelation feels important.  
  
Out of a stall, Sam leads the dark obsidian horse he’s taken when the four of them have gone riding together, saddled and bridled with bags of his own strapped to the back of the animal. Bucky blinks in surprise and frowns; Steve displays a similar reaction when he notices his valet has also packed and readied himself for their dramatic escape.  
  
“You’re coming?”  
  
Sam rolls his eyes, as if it’s the most ridiculous question he’s ever been asked. “Of course I am. Your pampered princely ass couldn’t survive two days without me.”  
  
Steve exhales noisily and his face breaks into a smile. He pulls Sam bodily into a tight hug. “Thank God. I wasn’t nearly ready to say goodbye to you.”  
  
“Too stubborn to _ask_ me to join you, though,” Sam points out, poking Steve in the ribs.  
  
“Please come with us?” Steve requests. It’s utterly pointless, now, but Sam smiles at him and nods.  
  
“I will.”  
  
Bucky’s eyes find Thor’s. His first real friend. The man he’d been so intimidated by, with his mess of hair and his height and his loud voice, but who was always so gentle with the horses and so kind to Bucky. It had been one of the braver moments of Bucky’s life, the day he’d asked Thor to ride with him, and the beginning of a friendship that has come to mean so much. It taught him he could be liked for who he is, not for his title or the circumstances of his birth.  
  
“I understand if you’d rather not,” Bucky tells him. “We have no idea what we’re doing or where we’re going. But you are welcome as well. We would be honored.”  
  
Thor’s chest moves in a contemplative breath. He glances around, looks behind himself at the little cabin Bucky’d had built for him. Thor had been so proud of his real bed and his stove and his pots, and of learning to read with the help of a maid. Bucky is about to retract his offer, quickly feeling badly about asking Thor to give it all up and accompany them in what could so easily end in disaster, when Thor shrugs as if it isn’t an unreasonable request at all.  
  
“Alright,” he says. “I have no family here, other than you three. Riding off into the unknown, a quest to rescue a Queen, it does sound fun.”  
  
“I can’t promise fun,” Steve replies, reaching for Thor’s hand to shake it, “but I can promise you’ll never be bored.”  
  
Thor laughs. “Even better.”  
  
He goes into his tiny house, to collect his things. It takes him such a small amount of time, because he has so little.  
  
The sun is just rising behind the castle at the top of the hill. Warm yellow light swells around it, illuminating it from the back, making long windows shine and golden trimming glow. Bucky looks up at it. His eyes travel along eaves and towers, across windowsills and balconies and wooden lattices covered in lush ivy. He can see the line of windows that belong to his rooms. He can see Steve’s, too, and the ones that were Becca’s. He can’t see the glasshouse, but he can picture it so clearly in his mind. Towering palms with their impossibly smooth trunks, hibiscus bushes bursting with brilliant blossoms, plants with big leaves and small, rough ones and soft ones. He can’t see the windows of the Great Library, either, but he can picture it, too. With its roaring fireplaces and endless shelves stuffed with more books than Bucky could have read in four lifetimes.  
  
He hasn’t always been happy, here. But it’s the only home he’s ever known.  
  
Behind him, arms encircle his waist and the warmth of a familiar body presses into his back. Bucky shifts his weight, leaning comfortably into the embrace. Trusting it will hold him, trusting if he stumbles these arms will always catch him, as they always have.  
  
“Ready?” Steve asks, with a kiss to his cheek.  
  
“Yes,” Bucky whispers. “No.”  
  
“You know you can stay. We don’t have to do this.”  
  
“No, I can’t.” Bucky turns in his arms; turns away from the castle, and toward Steve. He takes Steve’s cheeks in his hands and kisses his lips. “And I don’t want to.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Bucky’s fingers slide into Steve’s hair. It’s soft between them. In a murmur so only Steve can hear him, he returns the words Steve has so often spoken to him, asking, “run away with me?”  
  
Steve laughs, loud and bright, and kisses him soundly. “Yes. Of course I will.”  
  
“Are _you_ sure?” Bucky teases. “I have very little to offer. I can’t cook or hold a sword or draw my own bath, remember?”  
  
“All I want is you.” Steve smiles into a longer, slower kiss, until Thor’s booming voice calls to them that they should get a move on before the sun has properly risen.  
  
Bucky slides his fingers along Merlin’s nose as he takes the reins of his horse from Thor. “Hello, handsome boy,” he says to the animal. Their eyes meet, and Bucky smooths out his long mane. Like Bucky, this is the only home Merlin has known. “Ready to leave this place?”  
  
He gets no answer, but the horse is calm and trusting as always, and Bucky steps into the stirrup and hops easily up into the saddle. This, he knows. He’s confident on horseback, and remembers afternoons spent with his friends, flying across endless fields. He remembers sneaking their horses out of their stalls in the middle of the night as if they were breaking prisoners out of a cell and riding with Steve into the village. He remembers how happy he’d felt, how free.  
  
“Where to?” Sam asks, looking to Steve. He’s their unofficial but undeniable leader, he always has been. No one has ever needed to chisel it in granite to know that they all look to him for direction. It’s always been too much weight on his shoulders. From now on, Bucky thinks, they’ll be a team.  
  
Steve grins at them. He squeezes his heels into the sides of his horse, galloping away as he happily cries, “to adventure!”  
  
Sam snorts and takes off after him, shouting, “that isn’t a destination!”  
  
Thor rumbles out a laugh like rolling thunder and his horse follows.  
  
Bucky inhales deeply. The cool morning air tickles inside his nose, fills his lungs to the brim with tiny crystals of ice. Refreshing, clarifying. He takes one last look over his shoulder at the castle. In retrospect, it isn’t nearly as big as he used to think it was, at least not when compared with the idea of the whole, wide world.  
  
He steels his courage and flicks the reins. Everything he’s known disappears behind him, and before him, everything he’s wanted stretches into infinity.  
  
* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very much for reading and for all your lovely comments! 
> 
> Come talk to me [on tumblr](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/) [or twitter](https://twitter.com/turningthedials) if you want!


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